Intertextual Inspiration

2. Anders Tomlinson is a “complex and complete artist that merges different creative
disciplines into story telling” who often works with painting, graphic art, sound, video
and photography to communicate different ideas.
by Anders Tomlinson
The art also shows how relationships often take place in their own world, away from
everyone else with only one another as company. This inspired us to have only our
two main leads in the video with no one else, suggesting that they only see each
when they are together, a notion often associated with being deeply in love.
I found this series of artwork when researching relationships in art. It shows how
when a couple enter a relationship they can become in synch with one another,
sharing thoughts and feelings etc. and ultimately become one person.
The artwork also inspires me to have our music video have lots of links to nature in
it. Wildlife is often associated with love due to it’s natural and peaceful
connotations; in these paintings, images of space and time are used to show the
depth of their feelings. This is an image I am keen to replicate during the beginning
of my music video, when the two lead characters are in love and nothing else
seems to matter than one anther. The bright, vivid colour scheme also reflects the
loving, happy emotions associated with the start of new relationships.

3. Looking back, I sometimes wonder
If there were things I should have changed,
A hurt that even now I might appease.
Has it all been taken from me?
No, time has shown a tender mercy
For I still have my precious memories.
by Alora M Knight
Little thought was given
As the years went quickly.
We took good times for granted, that is true.
Perhaps, it all was for the best,
Enjoying simple pleasures,
In retrospect, that was all we ever knew.
I will take those precious memories
And frame them with my love,
Then hang them in the hallways of my heart.
I hope the fond remembrance
Of the joys that once were shared
Will overcome the tears that want to start.
There was no use to ask the future
To give away its secrets.
No blueprints for what would lie ahead.
It is the choices that are made,
Experiences, both good and bad,
That down life's pathways, all are led.
The poem goes on to accurately convey the hurt and sadness of no longer
being in love with someone, much like how my couple feel by the end of the
video; however, it recognizes that by remembering past memories, the
relationship becomes bittersweet instead of simply bitter, which reflects the up-
beat and poignant tone of the track: Gather and Run representing the couple
running through life, gathering their memories in their wake to reflect on later.
The poem discusses how, at the beginning of a relationship, everything goes by
so quickly and each new day is taken for granted; this is much like my story
concept, where the couple are so caught up in the own world they don’t even
realise when their relationship begins to feel strained.
I found this poem when researching people’s experiences on losing a person
they once loved. I wanted to gain as much knowledge on the subject as I could
so I could convey the loss convincingly in my music video: a story of two young
men who fall in love, but during the course of the track begin to fall out-of-love
with each other until at the end they are separated.

4. Directed by Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind tells the story of Clementine (Kate Winslet) who, after a
painful breakup, undergoes a procedure to erase all memories
of her boyfriend Joel (Jim Carrey). When Joel discovers what
Clementine has done, he undergoes the same procedure and
slowly begins to forget about the woman he once loved.
Blue Valentine is directed by Derek Cianfrance and tells the story
of a married couple, Dean Pereira (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy
Heller (Michelle Williams), regularly shifting back and forth in
time between the happier, early stages of their relationship and
the ultimate dissolution of their marriage several years later due
to his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption.
These films inspired me as they both take the subject of a broken relationship and use non-linear narratives to tell the story of
the build up to the break up. It inspired me to use flashbacks to tell the story of the relationship between my two main characters
to emphasise the way their feelings change for one another throughout the course of the video. Like Blue Valentine, this will
hopefully emphasise the sadness and sense of loss felt when a couple is experiencing difficulties,
but will also have a bittersweet emotive pull like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where by
remembering the good times of the relationship it reminds the audience that there was once love
there, creating a more reflective, reminiscent atmosphere to make the music video more uplifting,
matching the heartening tone and lyrics of the track Gather and Run.

5. The film Anna Karenina inspired me due to it’s flowing
camera movement achieved during first half of the film.
Clever transitions are used to make it seem as though the
film takes place inside a theatre, so Anna Karenina is
constructed like a theatre production, transitioning smoothly
between each take. I want to achieve this feel in my music
video in order to represent that my characters are rushing
through their relationship, never pausing to realise that they
might be drifting apart from one another.
Transition 1 is that of a toy train going through a tunnel,
before emerging on the other side at night as the real train
that Anna is travelling on. The camera never moves position,
just changes focus, which is a clever way of transitioning
into the next scene. As is transition two; as Levin walks
across the stage, he pulls open the heavy doors to reveal
the next location, a cold and snowy scene. Transition 3 plays
with lighting, illuminating Anna’s background until the
audience cannot see anything, before cutting to the thick
smoke of the train. When creating our video, we want to
take aspects of each of these
transitions and put our spin on
them to create a fast-moving,
flowing video, matching the
upbeat pace of Gather & Run.

6. In his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which The Wizard of Oz was based upon, author L. Frank Baum describes Kansas as
being 'in shades of grey’, with Dorothy living in a farmhouse with paint peeling and washed away by the weather, which gave it
an 'air of greyness.' Baum also described Aunt Em and Uncle Henry as being 'grey with age’, further cementing Kansas as being
dreary and dull for young Dorothy. During the film, therefore, the use of monochrome and sepia tones for the Kansas sequences
was a stylistic choice that conjured images the dull and grey countryside. The use of colour in the production was extremely
important to the film studio, with the bold, bright colours of Oz highlighting that Dorothy had travelled to a new world far more
exciting than Kansas. The MGM production crew often favoured some hues over others; this even resulted in the studio's art
department taking almost a week to settle on the final shade of yellow for the yellow brick road.
The changing of colour to symbolise Dorothy’s change in surroundings from what was ultimately a boring life to an exciting,
fantastical world inspired me when it comes to creating my music video. When the couple in my video first meet, the colour
saturation is very dull and dark; that is, until the two touch and their whole world explodes into colour. Like Dorothy in The
Wizard of Oz, this can symbolise how their lives were empty and boring without one another, and now it has colour and life.
Also, when Dorothy ultimately returns to Kansas, the difference in colour is very apparent; the bright, jewelled tones of Oz have
disappeared to make way for dull, brown hues, reminding the audience of Dorothy’s far more boring reality. This inspired me for
my music video as the colour grading will become progressively saturated and dull throughout as the couple falls out-of-love
with each other, reminding the audience that nothing can remain bright and optimistic forever.

7. by Ernest Hemmingway
“Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold,
wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.”
by Francis Brett Young
“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.”
by P.D. James
“An autumn garden has a sadness when the sun is not shining...”
“Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest;
orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of
nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild
colour just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued
hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.”
by Shauna Niequist
As we would be filming in the autumn, I looked up different quotes about that particular season and people’s different
interpretations on it so I would be able to weave these themes into my music video. The first quote discusses how we should
make the most of Autumn, and uses lots of natural imagery, from flames and leaves to get this message across, inspiring me to
use lots of nature themes in my video; this could represent how their love is natural and pure. The second quote links to when
the couple are falling out-of-love; the foundations of their relationship remain, but the love is no
longer there. The third quote talks, again, about selective memory, linking to the idea of our
characters not realising the relationship is failing as they seem to be clinging on to past, happier
memories. The final quote talks about hope even when you think there is none, which is important
as we want our video to have an uplifting end, or the overall product would become too depressing.

8. by Katie Melua
by Walking on Cars
The use of birds-eye view in Nine Million Bycles inspired
me because in one of our scenes we wanted to have our
two main characters in a field. We were not sure what
composition to have or even what our characters could
be doing, but this video inspired us to have our two
leads on a picnic, with the birds-eye view looking down
on them. However, we were not sure what transition we should use to get into this
shot. This is, until we watched the video for Always Be With You, where the edit
cuts between one of the leads falling onto a sofa and the other onto the floor. This
led to us developing a concept of having our two characters sitting on a bench in
one shot, before cutting to them falling onto the picnic blanket in the next shot, almost as though they had stayed in one position
and their surroundings had changed around them instead. Always Be With You also inspired us as it featured two leads of the
same gender in a romantic relationship; the relationship was treated in the same way that it would be a straight couple, which is
a notion we wish to follow when creating our music video. Much in the same way, we want to highlight that that LGBT
community is equal to – and faces the same issues as – heterosexual couples.