Influences we looked at- Fall Out Boy

Fall Out Boy created this album based on a collection of songs most liked and most bought by their fans. The cover is quite Gothic as it is a dark coloured cover and suggests death by the two skeletons in the center. I thought the way they contrasted the Gothic with the ordinary was good as it felt misleading. The ordinariness of the guitar and shoes and other everyday objects suggested that they belong to the skeletons in the center. There is also a sort of romantic image in this album as the two skeletons in the center are laying together facing each other. This seemed fitting with the idea of our song where the girl doesn't have the man she wants whereas on this cover even in death they are together in an embrace.

Influences we looked at- Elliot Minor

Elliot Minor was introduced to me during the project by my partner as she in a big fan. They have an original style as they combine rock music with classical instruments. They're image reflects them exactly. The cover above suggests the norms of societies as that is how they see that they're expected to dress. The background on both illustrate who they really are and how they create their own worlds through their love for music.

The cover below reminded me more of the Gothic theme we were after. the full moon suggest a supernatural element which crosses over between both the Gothic and Fairy Tale idea. The image of the trees and the never ending path made me feel trapped in the album cover which reminded me of the theme of entrapment in the Gothic genre. Moreover, the organ in the middle suggested to me that someone is meant to be there playing it and as there is no one it looked more mysterious and eerie to me.

Influences we looked at- Avril Lavigne

Avril Lavigne seemed to be most like our artist both in song style and image. The only noticeable make-up on her is around her eyes as she takes on a 'Rock- Chick' image. Our two vocalists take the best of Avril Lavigne and Hayley Williams. Mia took on the more natural Hayley Williams look whereas Mae can be related more to Avril Lavigne as her make up appears more obvious. Both girls reflect who they are through their image and their song style, we tried to capture the same idea from our artists. Also, Avril Lavigne's website (above) was our original inspiration for our website however, we decided to make it more Gothic and decided instead just to use the colour scheme as it matched our image so well. Her latest single (below) was based on the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland theme. This brought together the idea of fantasy and Gothic similarly to our theme.

Influences we looked at- Hayley Williams

Hayley Williams is the lead singer of the band Paramore. She became a muse for us as we wanted to achieve the natural look that we liked having researched her. Hayley Williams customizes her look by adjusting her hair colour to look different rather than relying on heavy make up. We decided that the lack of make up illustrates an innocence within her which we would like to reflect in our artist. The picture above makes a clear comparison of the two images we considered. The image is from the video 'Misery Business' which we mentioned earlier. We thought that the clear differences between the two girls shows the two ideas of females. Whereas the one on the right is more stereotypical, we preferred Hayley Williams' less obvious appearance and chose to model around her.

Fantasy Boy and Undependent, Avant-guard, Experimental Lo-fi (Emerald Reels 1999)

'If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.'

Soren Kierkegaard

According to the aforementioned source, this is when a film is filmed to represent an artistic expression without having planned or scripted or have any structure pre planned. This is often done by a low-budget production. The aim of this was to make good films opposing to Hollywood blockbusters.

The norm for main stream filming is to have a plan for everything and use that plan throughout the filming time. Trial and Error is uncommon as a filming or editing method.

So how does this relate to Fantasy Boy?

When we filmed, we made a rough storyboard of what we would like to produce however, in practice we discovered that sudden inspirations can be better or more appropriate to our music video. We discovered some of our best ideas through trial and error rather than staying with our storyboards.

Also when we were filming in the Skate park, it was impossible to plan how to film, what to film and where to film from. The skaters could do something, anything unexpected and if we had planned how to film we could have missed it. We found that working spontaneously in the skate park allowed us to get a huge variety of shots. It also meant that we weren't restricting ourselves to what we could film.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

As a huge fan of Tim Burton's work and Alice in Wonderland. I insisted we explored the new film coming out in March 2010. As Tim Burton directs Gothic themed films and Alice in Wonderland is a Fantasy story it felt fitting to look at.

We looked at the innocence of Alice and compared her to our other muses Hayley Williams and Avril Lavigne. We decided that Alice represents the innocent child which is corrupted through experience and curiousness. We considered what a 21st century Alice would look like in comparison to the picture above and then adjusted our ideas to fit our colour scheme which added to our ideas towards their outfits.

When I came across the above image it caught my eye as the colours they had used were mainly bright yet they appeared quite dull. This seemed appropriate as we were using the bright colour pink and mixing it with the dark black. Therefore, when we create our website we plan to adjust the colours to match the feel of them merged together to the backgrounds of these images. Additionally, even though Alice in Wonderland appears to be a safe story, mislead by the images above, there is a deeper level to it that suggested a more corrupt darkness which we want to reflect through our website.

We used the above image to explore Gothic architecture for our website. We liked the stone pillars and the sense of winding around them suggesting a sort of imprisonment. We decided, however to go for the more traditional tower in which we considered having Mae as a damsel in distress but this would have defeated our theme of the 'New Woman'. By having a tower but no one inside it, we could mix conventions with subversions to make an original and creative idea.

We want to illustrate a dark Gothic theme on our website and looked at the 'Jabberwocky' from Alice through the looking glass. Alice shows a dominate yet subverted female role during this chapter/scene as she is the one who must go sleigh the Jabberwocky rather than wait for a male character to be the Saviour. This supports our feminist approach to our task as we want to show our artist as the 'New Woman' who can fend for herself unlike the 'Old Woman' who takes a more passive role.

The style of writing used for the title is similar to the style we want to use for our band name 'Mia-Mae' as it illustrates an uneasy Gothic theme while still drawing in all potential audiences. The heart inside the 'a' of Wonderland reminded me of our music video as it is all about finding love from a fantasy boy the same way Alice tries to find herself in her fantasy world.