When it came to deciding our costumes for both Lewis and our actors we started looking at the dress sense of our target audience. We decided to do this so we could create a connection with our target audience. Recent studies into media theories have made us aware of what Laura Mulvey (1975) identifies as screen surrogates. This theory highlights the importance of the representation of characters in media products in relation to its target audience. Hence, we looked in depth at our target audience to create appropriate costumes for our cast.

Narrative castUsing the social networking site Facebook we selected a group of

people made up of both our “Facebook Friends” who fitted in with our target audience (13-24 year old males and females). Following this we looked through some of their photos and conjured up a brief idea of the style and fashion of our target audience. From this we created a rough idea of what our actors should wear in our video. We noticed that a popular choice of clothing with males in our target audience were checkered shirt, particular in the summer period so we have decided to have our male actor Thomas to wear a checkered shirt. We decided that a red checkered shirt would be appropriate because the colour red carries conventions of romance which is a theme in our music video. In Barthes’s theoretical look at narrative in media he discussed the way that there is “a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signified; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances” what Barthes is essentially saying is what is seen on screen (the signifier) can be read by many different ways dependant on the audience (the signified). The red shirt in our costume choices will hopefully connote to the audience the theme of romance and love – which hopefully will reinforce the sentimental lyrics. You can the red shirt modelled beautifully by our dear friend Richard in the picture to the left.

We thought that jeans would be a good choice of clothing for both our actor Thomas and actress Kayleigh, as these are fashionable and popular within our target audience. Also jeans are casual and would be what a young couple would be likely to wear on a visit to the park. This makes our music video realistic and our target audience can relate to the characters easily.

We decided to use a contemporary summer clothing item for our actress Kayleigh to wear that could be purchased in high street shops such as Topshop and New Look. We came to this decision by speaking to female friends who happened to fit into our target audience and asking what they would typically wear if they were going to a park with their boyfriend. We also took the matter up with Kayleigh to see if she had any items of clothing that could accommodate this idea and

she suggested a white floral blouse/vest top. We agreed that this would be suitable for her to wear in our music video.

When it came to footwear we allowed our actor and actress to wear what they thought would be suitable. We asked them what would they wear if they were going to the park for the day to give a sense of realism to their costumes. We had planned in certain scenes of the narrative for both the actor and actress to run around bare footed. We decided to do this as it would look natural and make it seem like that they are comfortable enough with each other to do so. Also it taps in to the summer feel of the video.

One important part of the misé-en-scene in our music video, when it came to the costumes, was to focus the wearing of wedding rings of both our married actor and actress. We decided that this would be a good idea to do so we could emphasise the true love of the couple. One of the shots we decided to use to focus on the wedding rings can be see to the right in a panel of our storyboard.

PerformanceOne of the most important things when a band or act release their first

few music videos is to get a sense of ‘star persona’. Because of the importance with this, we felt it was most appropriate to allow Lewis (The Next Forever) to wear clothing that he would be likely to wear during live gigs, this included his trademark lock and key chain necklace which he claims he never takes off – this has also been used as a focal point in some of his earlier promotional shots. When studying existing media products of a similar genre we felt it important to maintain a similar ‘relaxed’ vibe around performance

sections of such music videos – as seen in Jack Johnson’s music video ‘Upside Down’, pictured left. As you can see, Johnson is wearing t-shirt and jeans, and as he is a similar genre to The Next Forever we felt this approach would be appropriate. When suggesting this to Lewis he agreed that a t-shirt and jeans

combo would be the most suitable for his sound and current image.(Additionally, during filming it would be likely that our artist – who has

not featured in a music video previously – would be uncomfortable wearing clothing that differs from his normal wardrobe. This would cause problems for us during filming and could come across awkward on screen.)