What does ‘White Girl’ say about identity, youth, modernist and post-modernist concepts of identity?

At the beginning of ‘White Girl’ Leah shows signs of a modernist concept of identity, her identity has been created by her family (mostly her mother). She starts as a Christian and rejects the teacher and students at her new school because of the differences between their religions and the feeling of alienation she feels from them because of this. This is shown by Leah’s refusal to join in the assemblies or any of the other activities that the other students partake in, Leah does this to keep her mother happy. As the eldest child she also helps take care of her younger siblings and thus her modernist identity is impressed upon her siblings, however when Leah begins creating her identity her mother rejects the change and the younger siblings see this rejection and keep their identity as is. It gives a huge insight into the vulnerability of children to outside influences such as identity and how they grow strong enough to pull away from the modernist values of identity to build their own. Leah is old enough to see that her mother is not infallible and can be wrong and lie which is why she rebels against the identity her mother has created, which displays her maturity and understanding of the situation they have found themselves in at the beginning of the film.

When Leah’s mother takes back her partner (who was the reason they moved in the first place) Leah starts to realise that her mother’s identity is making her unhappy and creates her own identity, a post-modernist identity created by Leah herself. In this new identity she wants to completely separate herself from her previous modernist identity, including the name her mother gave her which she changes to ‘Layla’, she also changes her religion to that of her new school friends (which indicates that outside influence is always needed to create an identity, in this case, peer influence). At first her mother disagrees with this new identity but it gives the newly dubbed Layla a chance to tell her mother the truth about how she feels. Layla’s post-modernist identity shows the mother why she left her partner in the first place which makes her leave him a second time and accept Layla.

‘White Girl’ associates modernist identity with being unhappy while the post-modern identity gives Layla the confidence to talk to her mother, the friendship, self-belief and hope she needed while her mother was rejecting her, she could see the light at the end of the tunnel, the clarity that her new identity gave her. Layla’s journey from modernist to post-modernist was mostly positive, even the denial of her mother to accept her turned out to have progressive worth to Layla and her mother. ‘White Girl’ gives the message that post-modernist identity has a positive journey of self-actualisation that is desired by youth who are trying to grow beyond the family values.

Overall Profile

This is my target audience in a basic format, some of these parts I went into more detail with in my audience and musical profile.

Above are the four main aspects of an audience, the parts that an audience use to show themselves as a fan of that genre and parts of how bands appease that (such as in the media section, the target audience don't tend to watch TV much so bands use websites and radio). There are also parts that a marketer would use to target the audience such as lifestlye and what clothes they wear, how they buy music and tickets to festivals.

Although I don't have a specific section in my profile about the importance of music to metal fans, my music profile has explaination to as why fans are attracted to the genre, through research on metal bands, I find that the fan followings seem to be a way of belonging and sharing values. Music seems to have a deeper meaning for metal fans than for other tribes and everything about them is geared towards the genre, for example taking time out to attend festivals and gigs, wearing band t-shirts are the only branded part of thier appearance, etc. The devotion metal fans have to thier music is something that I will have to think about when making my digipak as some specific things have to be met to be a part of the genre that fans would expect from a newly debuted metal band.  

There is more detail of the bands they like and how they are advertised in my musical profile.

There is more detail of festivals on my muical profile.

I went into more detail of this in my audience profile and I find it important which is why I have highlighted it by taking a closer picture.

Musical Profile

Music Profile

What have I learned that I would find useful in making my digipak?

Looking at the posters and merchandise, it is obvious that metal bands prefer to have their own logo for the fans to identify them with so all the items in my digipak will have either a logo or a specific font that sets it apart from the other bands. For the CD cover I noticed that the debut album did one of two things:

1.       Introduced the band

or

2.       Introduced the genre

I have the choice of having images of the band or cover art that depicts the genre, however I also have a third option of putting both together and showing both the band and the genre.

As for colour scheme, I found that most of the metal bands used black or very dark colours contrasted with red/silver/purple. It seems that contrast between light and dark colours is the norm in most CD cover art for metal. As a new metal band, ‘Interstate’ would want to hold to the ideology of metal but set itself apart from it at the same time so I will follow some of the normal traits of metal but set the band apart through different means, most likely with the cover art.

Research into Music Video - White Flag Warriors by Flobot

Two Changes of Cast

While the band and Team 1 remain unchanged, I had to change two members of Team 2 due to unavaliabilty of the actors, I therefore have changed:

Star for myself, Miriam. This does not affect my original reasoning as I have changed a female for a female so my original points about women in the army remain. Myself and Star are of the same stature and height so this does not affect my filming in any way except in the scenes I was in where I had someone else press the record button/hold/move the camera as neccesary. As Team 2 and both teams together are only in a few scenes this did not happen that much

The second change is Jack S for Emily. In this case I changed a male for a female which makes the teams unbalanced in the sense that one team now has one female while the other has two. However I think the imbalance actually supports the music video better, it makes the two teams easier to differentiate for the audience and the unbalance of gender represents the fact that war is never equal and that there is always difference in numbers, ages, gender, race etc. When Jack said he could no longer be in the the music video the above reasons are why I decided to recast a female actress instead of a male. I think that the filming shows these reasons better than with my original cast and some of the differences from my original cast help create a more indepth view into war and the variance between sides.

Michel Maffesilo's POV of 'Find Your Tribe'

On the subject of ‘Find Your Tribe’, I find that the site reflects my opinion of today’s youth culture. While the site is relatively simplistic in how it separates today’s youth into groups or ‘tribes’ using a questionnaire about their current likes and dislikes, its conclusions show without a doubt that our youths have disintegrated from one mass culture into many factions with which they identify themselves. The site also shows how there is a proliferation of lifestyle tribes, ‘Find Your Tribe’ was run in 2005 and again in 2008 and between these three years the number of tribes has increased which means there has been a creation of more tribes. A creation of new tribes and the death of others mean that our adolescents live in the fluidity of ever-changing tribes and social circles. ‘Find Your Tribe’ proves that the young adults have freedom of choice in how they live their lives and express themselves despite the ideological apparatus that they are subjected to from a young age.

Audience Profile based on 'Find Your Tribe'

Mosher's

What is 'Find Your Tribe'?

Find Your Tribe was started by Channel 4 in an attempt to gain insight into the UK youth so they could direct better advertising at them. The UK youth is split up into many different types of people which Channel 4 named as tribes, there are 5 main sections (Mainstream, Leading Edge, Alternative, Urban and Aspirant) and each have tribes associated with them. The reason that UK tribes have so many tribes under these 5 main sections is because the youth culture have a tendancy to group where they find people with similar values, if there is one large tribe whose members can be further divided by a difference in opinion then two seperate tribes are born of this one original tribe that share many values but differ in others. This is why there are now so many sub tribes of metal of example. Each of these tribes, while sharing some values, have some different ideals, and it is targetting these ideals that makes advertising so easy to adept to a niche audience. Channel 4 used an online survey of as many young people as they coulod get as well as getting people out in the street to question young people on their likes, dislikes, media usage and so on until they could find a tribe for them to belong in. Each tribe has some specific markers that make it unique, and it is this that media marketers need to know.

The results of the survey gave marketers a guide that showed them how to appeal to thier target audience for the 16-26 ages. For example Metalheads prefer listening to radio over going to the cinema so advertisers could use that to target Metalheads by using radio advertising, while for Geeks, or PC World tribes using the internet would be a better way. Channel 4 wanted to set themselves up as a key player in identifying new niches for advertisers to use, and they hope to stay in this position by constructing an up-to-date guide to the every-changing dynamics of youth culture.

Costumes and Props

Ryan:

Drummer, Semi-formal attire.

Ryan is the least formal of the three band members, wearing a rolled up shirt and blue jeans. The blue jeans don't matter too much because he is behind the drums so his jeans can't be seen in the video. As he is in the picture above he does not look like a metal genre drummer because he is wearing light coloured clothes and as I have written below about the drums, the dark colour is important. However when metal genre was first created it was about being rebellious and Ryan does defy the metal convention here by wearing a light colour as opposed to dark. If Staz's clothes are considered beside Ryan's, Staz also has a light shirt and as he is in the foreground of the band performance so Ryan would be lost in the dark if he didn't also were a light colour to stand out against the black background and drums. The obvious face that the boys in the band are wearing light colours and Julia is wearing a dark dress draws attention to her and this colour difference also creates a contrast within the band so they don't all match and this brings across the rebellious ideology of the metal genre again. I didn't want the band wearing all the same colours as this would lose thier individuality and make them look conforming which is a big part of army life, I wanted the difference as it would metaphorically give the lead singer (and band) two opposing aspects of personality (order and chaos), this is another part of the metal genre's original ideology of going against convention and giving indiviuals a choice, in a sense creating chaos from order.

  

Staz:

Lead singer/guitar, semi-formal.

Staz is in semi-formal clothing, a bright shirt which is not tucked in disrupts the conventional funeral look, makes him stand out in the background and also makes him look quite pale and deathly, considering his status as a dead soldier in the music video this look ties the narrative and performance together very well. As a person he does not look like a metal genre musician like Julia does (with her red coloured hair she stands out and long coloured hair is very common for metal fans). While a common look for metal fans is dark colours and band T-shirts, that look would serve no purpose in the music video, a new band would want to make a new name for itself and not promote other bands so the absence of metal paraphernalia does not mean a lack of genre-specific apparatus, I have used other methods to give the audience a sense of the genre, most notably the props for the band and the dark setting of both the performance and the narrative (a forest can have many negative connotations, especially with eight army cadets in it which adds a sense of uncertainty and danger).

Julia:

Bass, Semi-formal.

Julia is wearing a black dress which is formal and converse shoes which are informal so her attire is semi-formal. The dark colour is a representation of both the genre and of the narrative. While the story line needs the performers wearing camo, I thought it might lose the dark edge of the lyrics which is why I have the band wearing funeral outfits (the funeral type outfits also tie in with the fact the main singer in the narrative is dead), however the shoes and red hair represent the rebellious side of the metal genre. Metal genre always stays away from social convention, espeically in the early stages of the genre's creation. So the addition of some quirks keeps the band in the metal genre so as not to lose itself completely when faced with the song which is about war (soldiers are very conventional in a sense of clothing, training, behaviour in war, hairstyle, etc) and adding some typical metal genre aspects makes it more relatable to metal fans.

Cadet Uniform

The army cadets in my music video have DPM (disruptive pattern material) tops on and charcol colours khaki trousers, while the general has a full DPM uniform on. I did this so the audience could differenciate between them. While most army cadets have the full uniform on when training I thought it would cause confusion, however in pictures the trainers/generals/teachers do make themselves stand out, such as the picture below, which again is likely for the sake of the viewers of the photograph. I decided to have DPM tops rather than trousers because music video's have many close ups and having DPM trousers would not be seen as much in the shots while the tops will so it reinforces the army theme that runs through the video.

Photograph from 'Army Cadets and The Award' website:

'Ghost' Soldier Uniform/ General's Uniform

The ghost and the general in the video have the same uniform on which is to tell the audience that both have been through war, the ghost died and the general survived. Thousands of cadets are trained to go into war each year and despite all the training many still die. No training could ever could ever prepare soldiers for war, emotional turmoil of the death of friends and enemies alike, PTSD, injury and friendship between squad members is something that cadets are obviously told about but the real thing must feel more than can ever be explained. I think that the retrospective tone to the song is what gave me the idea of the training senario, When a soldier has been in real battles, they must think about thier training and the differences between then and now, about how real it is for them compared to when they were cadets. I think the difference is what makes the narrative follow the anti-war theme so well, especially as the main performer is dead, so the video is like a flashback of better times in a way. The costume is a very big part of creating the sense of the soldiers past and in his own mind his cadet training would have been a bit 'soft' which is another reason why the cadets are not in full uniform because in his mind he wouldn't remember himselve as being a 'proper' solider at that time in his life. Overall I believe the difference between the solider and cadets costume is a key part of the plot to differentiate his past and present self for the audience and for himself in his own mind. .   

Music Props

Drum set

The drum kit follows the metal genre with the black and silver and the drums could be considered to be a literal representation of the genre. The black represents the dark aspect of metal, when metal was first created in the late 1960's many of those first bands focused on the depressing and morbid aspects of life, sub cultures of metal change or add to these basic ideals but the darkness involved in metal permeates throughout metal and all its subcultures which is why black and dark colours are such a staple of the genre. The silver edges of the drums are very loud and contrast with the black, and this is many ways represents the lyrics of metal songs. The dark nature of the metal lyrics gives the idea that depressing means slow paced, introspective music but the fast tempo and deafeningly loud music of the metal genre creates a contrast to what would be expected. I think the drums have a huge impact on setting the mood for a song, the drums are the beat of the song and the placement of the drums on a stage often puts them near the back (mostly because of the size and how loud they are), but always in view of the audience. The drums are much larger than the performers and have a huge presence in a stage performance which I why I think they are important in a song, especially in metal as a genre because of the emphasise placed on the tempo and beat of thier songs.

ACDC current drum set for performer Phil Rudd:

Black Sabbath drum set for Bill Ward 

Both well known bands follow have similar drum colours because of what they mean to the genre, changes in the colours often represent changes in the band ideology, so subgenres may have slightly different colours but the same basic ideals are shown by the drum kit. Most metal drum sets will be dark in some way, whether through colour or by shining different colour spotlights on it in performances.  

Guitar

The lead singer's guitar is a simple black and white compared to the bass, as most of the attention of the audience is focused on the singer, he doesn't need a loud flashy guitar to draw attention. Many of the well known metal bands have simple lead guitars when compared to the bass, although both can still be very unique in design, a general rule is that the bass guitar is more so. ACDC's lead guitarist Angus Young has a black guitar:

while his bass counterpart Cliff Williams:

The bass guitar in ACDC is very colourful in comparison, in concert with a dark background this guitar would stand out to a much greater degree than the lead guitar.

Bass Guitar

The red and black bass guitar with the flaming heart in the bottom left of the instrument is very similar to guitars used by metal bands which links with the genre of my video. Colourful attention grabbing bass guitars are a staple for metal genre bands, for example Metallica:

Metallica has a silver bass guitar which suits the band name as well as drawing attention when contrasted to the black clothes and background of the stage and performer. The bass guitar in my band performance is very similar in that it is a stark contrast to the dark background and my performer, Julia, who is wearing black. However the guitar also has a similar colour to her hair which gives the performer and instrument a connection which links them in the shots where she is playing and draws attention to her.

Location 2 - Band Performance

I have decided to shoot the band performance in a room to contrast the forest and use cross dissolved images of the graveyard in the background to create a link between the narrative and performance. The music video is fast paced and so the imagery should match that. If I do this it gives me more freedom to experiment with different scenes in the background and adds more movement to the steady long shots of the band playing.

Having the band play in a room makes an urban link between the soldiers and civilians, an urban link gives the audience a sense of how close war can be to them, especially as many training facilities are close to towns and cities. So this shows the audience that war affects them, despite being far away from the action and this reinforces the antiwar theme.

Story Board

This is a storyboard of the narrative only, the band performance becomes a part of the narrative at the end of the song which is why it is included then. Between the narrative shots will be cuts of the band performing which will include a long shot of the band from different angles as well as close ups of the band and the instruments they are playing.

Location 1 - Forest

Good for an iconic memorable shot, (POV or over the shoulder shot would also look interesting, giving the audience a sense of running into the unknown which real soldiers face daily), the scene looks claustrophobic and puts the audience in mind of entrapment, something which happens to team 1 in the music video. This shot would look good in the first scene where the general is giving orders to the two teams before sending them off down the path. I will probably use the rule of thirds in this scene with the general on the right, the two teams on the left with the tunnel in the centre. The camera would be a medium shot of the actors before moving into close ups of all the performers. I would also most likely use an over the shoulder running shot when the performers are running down the path.

A dark and winding road; an iconic image. Good for a long shot or a POV shot as both will show the scene well but the POV shout will make the audience more involved, I would prefer a log shot of the scene because it would show the teams better and contrast the close ups of the band and ‘ghost’ solider.

Either of these shots would be good as a long shot with the trees between the camera and performers, as it gives a sense of separation, which is something soldiers would feel if they were deployed, another interesting view would be a long shot but have the camera following them from a distance as it would give the audience the idea of trying to be included but aren’t because of the situations soldiers find themselves in can be isolating.

This view is to the side and above the shot 0968, this shot will have the teams running past in the centre between the tree’s and will have the ghost of the soldier watching from the other side to show the audience that he is an observer like them.  

This is another shot where I could use thirds rule, the camera will be still and the teams will run past from behind, two members on either side. The camera could also be with the performers in this shot as a POV or over the shoulder shot.

A high angle shot for the camera to show the scene and make the team look vulnerable; this scene will most likely be put just before the ambush. 

This shot will be one of the last, when the ‘ghost’ is walking away from the scene through the trees as the music fades out.  It will most likely be a long shot but have close ups of the band performance cutting over while he walks away.

This is the tree where the ambush will be set for team 1, this would be a good low angle shot as the team runs towards the tree, sees the trap and then jumps out of the way.

These shots are two angles of the same area, a small dugout in the valley. It isn’t a good hiding place but the shots from inside the dugout look like they are from a hiding place which gives a voyeuristic aspect to the music video.

Checking how the camera looks with POV shots at different speeds.

Talking about one of the scenes in my storyboard.

This is me trying another POV shot of a winding path.

Looking at some angles with the camera