Independent Project - Final idea / prospectus

Alongside our project we have been tasked with creating a thorough prospectus/proposal document explaining our design choices and ideas.

My main idea for my independent project is to create a music video. It will be curated with an installation in mind where the user will watch the video in an isolated space. The video will be played in a small dark room with no lights. The video will be projected on a wall and a surround sound system will be installed so the video can be heard from all angles of the room. The user will sit on a backless-stool in the middle of the room, vulnerable to the dark themes present in the video. The video will be just over 4 minutes long and the song I have chosen is Oblivion by Grimes. The song features references to being attacked in the dark and walking home alone at night, and my installation will work to heighten this theme.

Originally I was planning on using the song "Simmer" by Hayley Williams because I really liked the themes of anger and rage present in the song, and I thought it would be interesting to explore them in a music video. Instead I have chosen "Oblivion" by Grimes because I like it's creepy instrumentation and I think it'll be fun to explore some dark cinematography with this song.

When I first considered making a music video, I initially had a large multi-screen installation in mind with multiple themes and narratives, but I decided this idea was very ambitious and could be reserved for my final year project instead. I created multiple storyboards and ideas for visuals as well as a diagram of how my project would be installed, and whilst I won't end up using some of these ideas, this process was helpful in developing my final concept.

My final idea will be a single-screen music video installation and experience. The song I have chosen is Oblivion by Grimes. The song explores the vulnerability the singer faces when she walks home alone at night, and the paranoia that she will be attacked, with the lyric "See you on a dark night" repeated multiple times throughout the song. My video is inspired by these ideas, and will be an exploration into the dark themes of loneliness, heartbreak and violence, focusing on one subject and her experience of these themes. The narrative will feature this character living with their head in the clouds, blinded by the relationship she is in, with contrasting shots of her alone looking vulnerable in the dark. Towards the build up and drop of the song, the mood will shift where her partner will end the relationship, and the remainder of the video will explore how she deals with the breakup. By the end of the video, she will have become the "the thing in the dark" that she feared at the beginning of the video.