Planning lighting and colour- Miss Georgiou

A variety of lighting styles are essential within a music video as differing styles and colours creates a variety. There are many different styles of lighting that can be applied to a music video for example high key lighting (this is known as light lighting, for example outside where natural light can fill the space and usually cause a more positive atmosphere), low key lighting (this is known as darker lighting and can cause a more negative and dull atmosphere) and sometimes strobe lighting (usually used within house and R&B music videos within clubs). Applying these lighting techniques can create a certain ambiance within the music video and intrigue and audience through the lighting that they visualise and the use of these elements are visually exciting  and expressive, thus creating something new and different.

A variety of colours are essential to include within music videos because alike lighting, colours can present a certain atmosphere and emotions to the audience as well as providing the audience with some knowledge about the artist as colours can highlight the type of person the artist is. For example, the colour blue represents intelligence, trust and confidence and if this was applied to our artist, she would be aligned with these positive traits that the audience would appreciate and look up to her. Overall, colours can influence the audience's opinion as certain choices can represent the artist in either positive or negative ways.


Within most of my music video, I will be incorporating high key lighting. This will be included within Hyde Park in flashback scenes as the artist reminisces over happier memories. This will be filmed in the day time to use sun as our lighting. We will use this and edit in pastel colours to add to the positive atmosphere. This creates a vintage feel, which synchronises with the artist's appearance. An example of scenes including this lighting are when out famous romantic scenes such as the titanic boat scene. The use of light, pastel and vintage colouring causes this to become more romantic and light hearted. This also makes the artist more relatable as elements of her life are presented to the audience, the lighting directs the emotions linked to these memories. It is conventional of the indie genre to use lighter colours and include the exploration of the artist's past life and appear naturalistic to their audience.

The next lighting style that will be featured in the music video is low key, with darker colouring. This will be used within a forest setting and to show the present day. An example of this is when the artist is sat next to a tree with a bottle of alcohol singing the more negative lyrics such as 'baby can you see through the tears'. This causes the forest setting to become even more conventional as the dark colours due to this lighting style, creates a sense of mystery and sadness. This lighting style reflects the relationship breakdown, which makes the situation more serious and negative. This impacts the audience as there is an idea of a concept and how love has the ability to effect emotions easily and quickly, which is reflected through the artist, creating an audience/artist bond. The lighting style is conventional to the indie genre as the darkness is grunge looking, and explores the artist's deep emotion as well as expressing the deeper meaning of the song and lyrics.


The music video will include a poker scene, where the audience will find out more about the relationship and the narrative. A mixture of both high and low key lighting will be used through the editing process. The high key lighting will provide a sense of hope, although it is false and the darker lighting effects will cause the feeling of mystery and foreshadow the abusive scene. This sets up the audience to see the destructive and negative side of the relationship, causing them to feel empathy for the artist and understand the lyrics to the song 'but you were chasing paper, caught up in the game that was the last I heard', highlighting our narrative idea that, he is in love with her but, his obsession with money matters more.


Within the high key scenes and flashbacks, our group will use a vintage filter. This will cause the video to look more authentic as well as highlighting the artist's emotions to the audience. This filter portrays positive emotions due to the amount of light, and will be applied during flashback sequences to highlight her more positive memories of the relationship. Most indie music videos contain a filter to exploit certain emotions, and it is conventional for the indie artist to show parts of their personal life to include the audience.

Fundamentally, my chosen target audience (teenage females) would build a relationship with my artist through the use of selected lighting/colours as these elements help to exploit the narrative whilst unintentionally causing a concept and the idea of love and romance and how a person's can be effected by these common lessons. These elements also cause emotions from the artist and the audience, as the female members can relate to the artist on the idea of love and heartbreak. This then causes the audience to relate to the artist as her emotions and past are put on display, showing that these lessons can even effect a musical artist/'stars' which overall causes her to become more relatable,