this is our favourite idea for an album cover as it features the image of a girl crying which can possibly be the girl in the video crying as she is at the end of our video. it also links to the song name and will incorporate chiaruoscuro as she will be in shadow. 
this is our album idea which features a sihouette of the band with the drums in the background. the title has a 'crying' effect which links to the words cries in vain. 
    
these are our initial ideas for the poster/magazine advert for our album cover. we decided on a band shot with neautral expressions and a small thumbnail to show the album. we will also feature a plug saying out now. while the location will probably be where we film the band shots we may just place them against a coloured background. 

crowd scene ideas

as mentioned before our target audience is people who listen to rock music, mainly the metal genre. these mainly consist of students between the age of 15 to 25 and working class people. while primarily males there are also many females who belong to this audience so we will reflect this in our video by using both genders as much as possible, primarily in the crowd scene. we will also closely stick o our mise en scene and code of clothing as a pop video wont appeal to rock/metal fans so we will remove any pop or other musical genres traits from our video. to ensure we appeal to this audience we will make a focus group to test screen our video and highlight both positive and negative parts of our video and act upon them so that the final product is well recieved.  

During the course of our filming we have encountered several problems. The first is that at this time of year we have a very small time window to film in as it gets dark soon, which while we want a dark theme, after half 4 it gets to dark to film. as most people in our video work or go school this has made it hard to get everyone together to film, meaning it is now a struggle to complete the final stages and leave enough time to edit the video to its best possible version. The complexity of our video means we require several locations which arent always at the times the cast are around due to other commitments. to solve this problem we have used other lighting to increase visibility in dark streets and are having to rearrange times for the larger crowd scenes. Hopefully we can achieve the video we have in mind and overcome these issues and make the best video we can. 

THEORIES:
vladimir prop: analysed hundreds of fairy tales and compiled a set of typical aspects to them. these are 8 different character roles, such as the villain, a hero or seeker character, the helper and a princess or reward for the hero. he also identified 31 narrative functions that make up and move the story along, such as punishment of the villain (usually at the end) and also the ban of an action (if sleeping beauty touches a spinning wheel she will die.). this form of structuralism can be applied to most film genres. however cultural changes can alter these conventions, such as a woman as the hero.
tzvetan todorov: developed the theory of disrupted equilibrium and stated all stoys follow the following pattern:
equilibrium-calm normality eg everyone is alive.
disequilibrium-disruption, problem that needs fixing eg everyone is dying
equilibrium-normaility is restored eg case is solved or people saved.
roland barthes:developed the theory of structuralism which shows that all storys follow a frame or genre such as horror or crime drama and the only reason these storys differ from one another is that while there are no authors or original works, narrators alter or rearrange genres in a different way. people know what to expect from these genres such as blood in a horror yet want to see it in a differant way.
he also developed the 5 differant acts to a story and the 2 that apply to our video is mainly cultural and symbolic. for example the use of black and white will clearly show the presence of a flashback as has been done in countless films. this use of intertextuality (how people relate real life events or pieces of media to other media) will be effective in making our narrative move along and be understood clearly.

i chose to analyse this video because it is similar to how our band shots will be done and also how the lyrics represent what is happening on screen. like our video the individual band members are shown throughout an abandoned decrepid building, with each member given their own room to make the video more dynamic and interesting if they are constantly changing location. they then often return to play together in the same location with the camera panning around them from a low angle. the lyrics are also mirrored by the images of destruction such as blow it all to bits with an explosion on screen and cobra strikes with a snake biting. we will use both these methods in our video with our own songs lines such as cries in vain and the character in despair.

MISE EN SCENE
to further portray our characters as authentic fans we will feature the correct mise en scene in our video. this mainly consists on band merchandise such as posters and shirts, which shows them to be genuine fan. as my room contains both of these we will use it as our main characters room.

CODE OF CLOTHING:
an important part of any metal video and ours is the image of the people invloved. to relate and reamin interested the characters have to look like both authentic members and fans. therefore we will all dress to suite this style and during the crowd scenes we will strictly incorporate this, the crowd members have to look like people who would actually both listen and want to see this band.

CHARACTERS:
the main protagonist is sean. he is the one wo goes through the emotional journey of the song and triumphs at the end.
the main antagonist is charlotte who creates the disequilibrium in the story. at the end she becomes the victim as sean triumphs over her.
chris is the other antagonist who adds to seans problems, but is also weak as he is merely a tool used by charlotte against sean.
the band