Sunday, 8 September 2013

Alice In Wonderland - Our Main Inspiration

We have decided that having a narrative would be simpler and better to work with in our music video, but we still liked our original idea of having a surreal world or dream world for us to create a more confusing or impressive atmosphere to keep the audience hooked. This also represents the escapism from reality for the audience - a big concept used a lot in all kinds of media. Therefore, after combining the two ideas, we all agreed that an Alice in Wonderland theme would be brilliant, due to the concept of 'Wonderland' being a non-physical realm in Alice's mind that she visits, and the use of many different objects involved from the inspiration of the 'Up In The Air' music video can objects related to this narrative, such as teapots, mirrors, cake, clocks, white rabbits etc.





(Alice In Wonderland by Tim Burton official trailer)

We were particularly inspired by the more traditional edgy twist to Alice In Wonderland, as opposed to the Disney and happy fairytale interpretations of the narrative, and for this therefore we looked at other forms of media, such as Tim Burton's film adaptation, and the animated games 'Alice' and 'Alice Madness Returns'. In 'Alice Madness Returns' we also liked the more mysterious gothic looking version of Alice with dark hair, which is a more traditional approach to Alice, and therefore we decided that this would work better in our music video. Within the game-play of 'Alice Madness' it describes how Alice becomes insane due to the guilt from her parents' deaths in a fire, and how the person who actually killed her family is a child molester - this concepts are a lot more twisted and disturbing compared to other forms of Alice In Wonderland, which therefore inspired us also to do something different.


(Her Name Is Alice by Shinedown with clips of Alice Madness Returns)

Due to the darker more edgy version of this theme, we decided on a genre of music to match. We chose the song 'Her Name Is Alice' by Shinedown because the lyrics would match directly to our video, and their genre is a form of alternative rock/metal, which would further match our theme. The song is also very dramatic and theatrical, which will allow us to experiment more with effects like slow motion and more dramatic use of objects such as smashing them or throwing them, to keep the audience engaged with what is going on. The song doesn't actually have an official music video, which we thought was good because that way we don't need to compare it to an original, and therefore can be more creative with our ideas.

Avril Lavigne - Alice (Underground)


Avril Lavigne's 'Alice' is the official song from the Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland film. Alike to the Tim Burton film, the music video for this song has a more dark and obscure twist which is something we have also been inspired to do. The entire thing is set in a forest, which we thought is a simple yet effective location - something for us to consider, which includes the use of her piano in the middle of the forest. This inspired us to maybe have our band playing their instruments also in 'wonderland'. There are a lot of Alice in Wonderland cliched concepts and objects, such as falling down a rabbit hole at the beginning, after following a white rabbit, and later on, a tea party with the mad hatter. These things make the video obvious that it is related to Alice in Wonderland, which is why we also have been inspired to use some of these ideas in our video. Avril's costume changes when she enters the woodland 'Wonderland', and when she leaves, which shows the difference between realities, especially when the dress in Wonderland is a more 'princess-style' Victorian gothic style dress, and her eye make-up seems more defined and darker. these things parallel the Tim Burton film it was made for, where the mis-en-scene shows the darker more mysterious nature of Wonderland compared to other interpretations such as the Disney versions. This is something which we became interested in, and to create an 'Alice in Wonderland' video to a darker genre of music, we decided to also consider costume types such as this. There are a lot of surreal looking editing types, such as a lot of cross fades and jerky quick cuts to fit with the surreal and mysterious nature of the setting that the song describes.

Gwen Stefani - What You Waiting For?



Gwen Stefani's 'What You Waiting For?' song really has nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland at all. It is merely used to represent a sort of 'daydream' world that inspires creativity when Gwen in the video has writer's block when songwriting. The use of Alice In Wonderland therefore is used as a concept that her audience will recognise and associate with. The colours used are extremely bright to show how the world is beyond reality, and also to show how random it really is, also highlighting the upbeat pop nature of her music. There are concepts in the video that the audience can identify to do with the theme such as white rabbits, croquet, a maze, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Alice being too big to fit in buildings. These are the kind of concepts that we have been inspired to use in our video so the audience will recognise the theme. Gwen Stefani features as the main protagonist in the video, alike to Avril Lavigne in 'Alice', to promote themselves as the character in a film almost, which is a contrast to our idea where we will have a male singer, but a female 'Alice' as a separate narrative to the performance. Also similar concepts we have been inspired by include the costume change from reality to Wonderland, where in Wonderland all the costumes are very different to 'normal' clothes, to show the surreal nature of Wonderland. There are a lot of editing techniques in this clip, such as transition fades, which work well with fitting to the beat of the song. To make our video look professional, these are also techniques we need to consider.

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