The document discusses the use of black and white face paint in the style of a skull for KISS band members and the musical band featured in a music video. It analyzes how the black paint symbolizes power, death, and strength while the white paint represents light, purity, and perfection. Together the contrasting colors and their symbolic meanings reinforce the video's theme of surveillance and a "deathly" message of war through the bands' iconic makeup styles.

1. “We had to go through torture to perfect the process of
putting it on,”
Stanley (KISS) admitted in 1996, talking about the
makeup process.
For our music video one of the main motives featured
throughout is the mise-en-scene, heavily including the
‘skull’ makeup. This is consisting of the contrasting
colours of black and white face paint, in the style of a
skull. This symbolic iconography signifies and denotes
this ‘deathly’ message of ‘war’. The specific use of colour
palette used on both the KISS band and our musical
band, enforces this theme of ‘surveillance’ and
constructing the narrative.
The colour of ‘Black’ associates itself with the notion of
power, elegance, formality and death. It is a mysterious
colour associated with fear and the unknown, whilst
denoting strength, authority and grief which strongly
supports the theme of our narrative within the music
video.
The contrasting colour of ‘white’ associates itself with
light, goodness, innocence, purity and virginity. It is
considered to be the colour of perfection and usually
holds a positive connotation, therefore can be considered
to go against typical conventions within the rock genre,
considering the general ‘rock’ portrayal is projected in a
much darker and negative atmosphere.
This specific colour palette is used within both the KISS
and our music band. It has been identified as a running
motif for both the music bands, therefore holds a
considerable amount of power within the identification
and representation of the bands.