RD Laing's LSD experiment

In 1965, Kingsley Hall the residential treatment centre for the mentally ill was opened by Ronald Laing. He had a profound idea to give his mental patients hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and DMT in order to "release their inner demons and childhood traumas." This lead to the regression of several patients to their childhood, for example patients such as Mary Barnes, who would smear the walls with her feaces for attention as she acted childlike. This historic event is remarkable for how far the psychiatrist RD Laing was allowed to go in terms of his psychiatric method, due to the attitude to the drug in that time.

The idea of hallucinogenic drugs and mental patients is implemented into our music video idea, as it allows us to better understand how those who are mentally ill act in order for our actors performance to be believable. It has also been implemented into our idea as during the chorus of the song while the actor is escaping from the mental hospital, it is really just an induced illusion from a hallucinogenic drug.

Influences On Our Music Video

Our idea for our music video was born from an idea about discussing mental health related issues. In this respect, we were influenced by the film Fight club. This film deals with personality disorder yet is quite humorous at the same time and incredibly stylish. The film despite it's dark subject matter managed to widen its target audience because it was visually stylish and therefore, this is something that we wish to include within our music video e.g. making something visually stylish yet at the same time appealing to a wide target audience. 

We acknowledged other music genres we could have tapped into. Yet, after evaluating the happiness of the pop genre, we believed that the rock genre had more areas to address to our audience. 

Our reason behind this is to appeal to an audience who may also feel disengaged and outsiders to society and get them to buy into our idea. We feel by conveying this image, it'll reach out to this niche target audience. 

Our music video will have colours and tones similar to Fight Club. We want it to be dark and creative a mood that reflects the harsh subject matter, power of the song and genre of the band e.g. hard hitting alternative rock needs to have dark lighting to convey the meaning of the song.

This video of Biffy Clyro singing 'Many of Horror' reflects many of our themes that we want to employ in our music video, the dark lighting, the use of the grey industrial setting and the dark clothing of the singer. All of these reflect the way in which we want our artist to be within the rock oeuvre and at the same time reflect the dark subject matter of the song and artist. By using dark colours and dark setting we can convey the darkness that will enable our audience to buy into our artists authenticity and at the same time reflect their alienation and disengagement from society.

Here is another music video of the 23 year old Archy Marshall, better known as 'King Krule'. The young sensation turned down the opportunity to work with Kanye West as he 'couldn't be bothered'. Many view this as him being authentic and true to himself that he doesn't need the excess fame in his life. In this music video, there are elements of darkness and aggression that we feel would work well in our music video. Furthermore, as parts of the video are filmed in the location of London, when our lead singer is in his 'fantasy world' where he is roaming the streets, we think areas used in this music video would work really well for us. The use of a fish eye lens effect and washed out colours would work really well with our fantasy scene. By filming on in central London, we will we be able to convey the true street image of London which will demonstrate the organic nature of the band and appeal to our alienated disaffect teenage audience.

Another fantastic song that illustrates the colour and hopefulness to life is none other than Cosmo Pyke's, Chronic Sunshine. He is a young British evolving artist who truly understands the British street culture and puts that across in his lyrics and his music videos. He filmed his video Chronic Sunshine on the streets of London. Due to us living in London, we feel his video is a positive vibe that we can emulate into our scene in our music video whereby our lead singer escapes into his 'fantasy world'. The use of lighting and establishing shots showing the streets is really good and creates an immersive experience for the viewer. By filming in private streets of London, we will be able to film our singer walking down empty roads with dark lighting appealing to the disengaged youth.

Facebook Profile of our Target Audience

Here is a facebook profile for our typical target audience. He is a rock fanatic and holds the looks of a typical rockstar fan. His long dark hair connotes to anger and rebellion and his lack of facial hair signifies he's a youth which is what we are selling our star image to. By conforming to generic music conventions such as lip syncing and close ups, we will be able to sell our star image to Robbie Savage and many other grunge rock fans across the industry. We understand as we are an organic band we will build our fan base over time and by having loyal fans to our band, the fanbase will continue to grow as we sell our star image effectively and correctly.

More signs showing he is our target audience is his activity. He was 'jamming out to some grunge'. Now as our organic band is grunge rock music, he would be our target audience. Thus if we sell our star image effectively, we can generate a larger fan base like Robbie.

Target Audience Moodboard

We are appealing to alienated, disaffected youths aged 16-25.

Here is a mood board I designed to represent the tone we are trying to communicate. The images shown include a fantasy like world and many mental health related images. We feel all of these images relate to Kurt Cobain and the message we are trying to portray in our music video.

UK VALS Framework of our Target Audience

VALS™ is a global segmentation methodology. The VALS global prototype shows basic contrasts—primary motivation—in each country. Strategic Business Insights builds systems for specific countries to accommodate cultural differences in the relationship between attitudes and behaviors as they exist. As a result, segment descriptions are country specific.

Clients use VALS most frequently for:

• Strategic planning
• Consumer insights
• Communication.

The United Kingdom's Consumer Groups

• The VALS category that applies to our target audience is Seekers
• Seekers want individuality, self-discovery, display, and action. They actively seek self-gratification, excitement, experimentation, and sociability.
• They are part of this VALS framework for they struggle to identify with society leaving them alone and feeling individual, whilst also always looking for action and excitement that comes with rebellion.  They constantly seek self-gratification in their actions when they do something such as graffiti otherwise they don't do any actions. This makes them rude and devalued in society, for they only do actions that please themselves and have no regard for the world around them.

Target Audience

Target Audience Indie Rock by Dylan Lief

Feedback on our Narrative

The positives picked up from our narrative idea was extremely useful as it allowed us to gather how clear our narrative is to people but also that the ideas from it that they liked. We take on board all positive and negative feedback and transfer it into our video to enable we sell our star image to our intended target audience being the disengaged youth of society.

The negatives picked up from our narrative idea was extremely useful as it allowed us to gather what was not clear or what people thought would need extra time on to make sure it will reach out to the disengaged youth of society. We take on board all positive and negative feedback and transfer it into our video to enable we sell our star image to our intended target audience being the alienated youth of society.

Explanation of Narrative Part 2

At the very start of our thought process, we had the idea of having a policemen throughout the duration of the fantasy scene basically chasing after our lead singer. We felt that this would help paint a clear image to our hard rock fans that the lead singer is simply in a dream and the police officer would resemble reality trying to catch up with his fantasy which ultimately would at the end of the video. We decided to not use this idea as we felt the fact of the lead singer taking the pill alone would be clear to the audience that he is in a fantasy. This was a risk but we feel through the use of conventions with close ups and also difference in colours and editing techniques, we feel we demonstrated this which was also shown in our audience feedback.

Another idea we had for our narrative was our lead singer running in his fantasy world on London's streets. We decided to not go forward with this idea as we felt by having other members of the public present in the video, it may not be clear to the target audience as to what exactly he is doing. We felt by keeping to just the 3 band members and the doctor who feeds him the pill, it'll be easier understood by those watching the video. We instead used our lead singer running in a tunnel with his fantasy world. Techniques we used were alteration of colours as there is an over the shoulder shot of him looking at words such as 'disturbing behaviour' and also editing techniques where we were able to show our reality lead singer and fantasy lead singer next to each other side by side.

To sum up, we ended up going for an approach where our lead singer begins in his reality which is a mental institution and the pill sends him into his free fantasy world where his clothing alters and there is more freedom in location and movement. Things we did to illustrate the lead singer in his reality world were: strait jacket, chains to 'lock him up' and also anger. To show his fantasy world was a brighter coloured shirt, more movement within scenes and also the band to also promote the organic feel to the band. All of these we felt allowed us to reach out to the hard rock genre and help sell our star image as an organic band to the alienated youth.

Our narrative stemmed from a systemic problem that is simply not talked enough about in modern day society which is mental health. At school one is taught about the simple things in life. How to write, speak, make friends. But nobody is taught how to cope with mental health. It is a rising issue in the world and as a group we felt it was imperative to raise the issues as we decided to make our narrative about a mental institute patient who has everyday life struggles, takes a pill and flies into his fantasy world where he is free.

Explanation of Narrative

The narrrative of our music video is centred around these key themes mental health, entrapment, expression and freedom, all of these emotions and feelings are expressed and highlighted through the narrative.

There is a man in the middle of a white asylum in a stray jacket and is chained to a chair, he is in a mental institution and clearly trying to free himself from this situation. He is given a pill which then sends him into his fantasy world and he is then seen exploring his mind and his freedom. However, as the song goes on and he has been free and explored his mind by looking at a brain, the frustration of being trapped or fighting his mental issues comes back and he is stuck in the asylum smashing things highlighting this frustration and anger.

The narrative really relates to the genre of hard rock as a key theme of rock is rebellious and freedom and these are both themes that are expressed in the video through the narrative. Furthermore, typical rock connotations are present in the narrative with smashing up things and raw emotion from the artist.

The star image of the band is also shone through the narrative as an organic band we want to build our fan base and relate to our specific target audience which is the disengaged youth and rebellious  members of society. We were able to do this as presenting the band members as ordinary who suffer the same problems as all of them through the narrative but at the same time are fighting it which is the message we want to send out to the target audience.

Narrative Mood Board

I designed this mood board to reflect the narrative of our music video. Not only this, but the lead singer from Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, suffered from severe mental health issues. I felt this mood board not only represented the narrative but also the truth of our lead singer of the song. He was his own worst enemy and sadly died aged 27.

The image that touched upon me the most was the birds flying away off the human arm. I felt this connoted a type of freedom to me that is hard to understand. I felt the number of birds represented all of ones problems simply flying in the sky, not aware of what is at the end of the journey but just simply going with the flow and taking life as it comes.