Influences of imagery

Madonna - Like A Prayer

Fallen Angels (film)

Live Freaky Die Freaky (film)

Green Day - Jesus Of Suburbia

Operate is offline

Unforunatly, our music video has been taken off youtube!
For copyright reasons we are unable to keep it online. Although we gained 500 views before this, and many positive comments.
Although, it is still currently on facebook.

Barbie Girl

We filmed this scene in 'The Footage' on Oxford Road. When we went into the toilets to film, we noticed that the doors, were covered in pictures of barbies! Which made this the most ideal place to film our scene.

This relates back to the barbie representation in this scene and how it subverts a female stereotype. This girly mise en scene, and romantic scene suddenly alternates as, becky leaves the toilet door, wiping blood onto the walls, signifying her mudering the male. This creates a frightening atmosphere, as were juxtaposing a child toy into a more taboo reference.

Costumes

Costumes were very important for our video. Firstly as we wanted to subvert and mimic stereotypes. Secondly, clothes are typically related to females. We still wanted to look feminine, because our theme is not to say, the girly stereotype is bad, but that all different stereotypes are ok. But no matter what we wear we are all female.
We tried to all look different from girly to goth. We looked at other female artists who are important in feminist pop culture from Peaches to Lady Gaga and noticed there costumes are quite exagerated but feminine. From corsets to colourful stocking and drastic make up and jewellry we created a similar idea, but keeping our own personal twist.

Lighting

The lighting was important in the music video, as we wanted to create different moods. I recently watched Wong Kar Wai's film, 'Fallen Angels' which used beautiful colour filters, which by themselves created tense and romantic moods. We enhanced the contrast through most of the film, to give it a gritty atmosphere, linking to its punk roots. But the most idealisc lighting was the scenes with Becky in pub. We used a red colour filter which looked amazing, especially when she was behind the small window. As in this part of the narrative, becky is trying to seduce a male, and we thought the red signified romance and love. But making it darker keeps the edgy atmosphere creating mixed feelings of the characters.

Riot Grrl

Riot Grrl is a feminist punk movement, which inspired not only us, but the artist herself, Peaches. Where bands such as Bikini Kill, The Runaways and Bratmobile. Where female punk bands sang about taboo themes and shocked the public. It also relates to third wave feminism, which means there are many different types of women in the world and we should all be equally respected. Peaches herself sings about controversial issues which arent appealed to a mass audience and create quite a shock to the public. As we were using a peaches song, we wanted to re-create this. Keeping the riot grrl movement strong, and create a female dominant, controversial video. By using a girl band, connotes girls working together, and being a community, rather than one iconic female. We don't represent a girl band, but women all over the world. We didn't want people to just watch this video and enjoy it but give a serious meaning and give girls the courage to be themselves and feel they are strong individuals, which we hope we have acomplished.

References to religion

As religion is an extremely well spoken and debatable topic. Throughout the music video, we've used symbolism and references of connotations of subversions of religion. In the background of the performance scene, there is a large wooden crusifix, which is juxtaposed with the costume of the devil horns worn by the performer. This is emphasise the dominance of women in general. The devil connotes evil and power which is being messed with to create a frightening and dark atmosphere we wanted to create. We wanted the females to be have a bad persona, as this stereoptyes the 'sweet girl' that is usually percieved in girl bands.

Another reason for this is to break authority. To create a controversial video by including a topic people feel uncomfortable to discuss. It represents the womens strong willed minds.

It was influenced by Madonnas 'Like A Prayer' music video which gained alot of critism and topped MTV's '100 music videos that broke the rules.' Madonna being a powerful female in pop culture, is a great role model for our video.