To create costumes for their music video that would appeal to their target audience of 13-24 year olds, the document discusses researching the fashion styles of that age group on social media. It describes choosing a checked shirt for the male actor that symbolizes romance, as well as jeans and a floral top for the actors that would be casual outfits for a park visit. The document also notes keeping the musician in trademark clothes like at concerts to establish his persona for new fans.

1. 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 cast
Using 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.

2. 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.
Performance
One 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.)