Casting, character influences and analysis

Casting

When considering our casting choices for our music video, Olivia and I came up with some initial ideas for the dinner party scene:

1. Female lead (artist)

2. Male partner

3. Dinner party extras

Initial options

We decided that the female character would be our artist, with us taking some inspiration from Fiona Apple, our song's artist. Since our narrative also includes the performance aspect in the video, this was an important casting decision as our female lead would also be taking on the role of the artist. Originally, we considered a friend of mine from outside of our Film class called Miyuki. We thought Miyuki would be a good choice for casting as they have the right look we were trying to reflect through our artist. They also study fashion and design, so this would have been an advantage for costume planning and makeup. However, we found we had conflicting schedules and they were in the middle of an exam season at school so we had to find another actor to play our performer.

Lucy Churcher

Lucy is in me and Olivia's Film Studies class at school, however she also takes Drama A Level and has some great acting skills, which she was willing to use in our music video. She has good experience as an actor, and had just performed in the school production of 'West Side Story'. Lucy was also a good casting choice for our female character as she is confident in front of a camera, especially as she was going to be playing a manifestation of a character's internal confidence in the video. Therefore, Olivia and I decided she would be the perfect choice for our female character, especially as we could discuss factors such as production planning, costumes and extra shoots with her.

Vedaant Jean Paul

Like Lucy, Vedaant is also in our Film Studies class, which also meant that communication with him would be efficient when we would need to shoot. He is also a Drama A Level student, and has experience acting in school productions such as 'Macbeth' and 'West Side Story'. Olivia and I wanted to portray a character here who doesn't initially come off as cold or uncaring in the relationship. In our music video, the male character would be happily chatting to their guests at the dinner party, whilst initially ignoring their partner in a subtle way. This would eventually unfold with the introduction of the kitchen fight scene. We chose to cast Vedaant as this character as he was willing to be in the video and is able to switch between these two emotions easily, so he would be brilliant to work with. 

Extras

As for the extras, we needed 3 or 4 for our video to act as guests to the dinner party. Olivia and I considered a couple of our friends to play some of the guests and our brothers, who are of similar age to us, to play the others. This was simple and easy for us as we were able to shoot with the extras together as we were in close contact with them.

Character influences

'I, Tonya' (2017)

Our artist's character is partially influenced by Margo Robbie's portrayal of Tonya Harding in 'I, Tonya' (2017). Specifically, in the infamous makeup scene which shows her on the verge of tears attempting to 'fix' her makeup before she goes back to perform. We were inspired by the lipstick she smudged on her face, rather than just her lips, which was something we were originally going to do with our character. In the end, we decided to have her smudge the lipstick on her lips in a more subtle way in the bathroom scene. This was an initial hint at her anger building up in the video, with the small red in the lipstick eventually building up to the big projector sequence at the end of the song.

'All Too Well: The Short Film' (2021)

Another inspiration for our artist was Sadie Sink's role in 'All Too Well: The Short Film' by Taylor Swift. The unnamed character served as a blueprint for the kitchen scene between our artist and her partner. Olivia and I were inspired by the use of cold blue lighting in the kitchen, as opposed to the warmer lighting of the dinner scene, exposing the reality of their relationship. We originally played with the idea of warmer lighting by Lucy's side of the kitchen where she was washing dishes, but decided against it in the end as the lighting did not work in the scene.

'Fleabag' (2016-2019)

Olivia and I found the mannerisms of the character 'Fleabag', played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the BBC show to be an inspiration for our character. Her iconic breaking the 4th wall by talking and looking directly at the camera was an initial inspiration for our artist, as we could potentially use it in a humorous sense, especially in the dinner scene as she is tired of being ignored. However, by the time we shot the film, we tried this but it didn't really work with the tone of the song or atmosphere we had created. Therefore, we only used this in the last shot of Lucy as she addresses the camera with the boldness of the final 'I won't shut up'. This now comes off as a final statement and a conclusion to the narrative.

 'Vertigo' (1958)

Another influence for our music video was the use of colour and silhouettes in 'Vertigo' (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. We wanted to include a lot of colour in our video, either to express the conflict of emotions in our character or just to give the video a vibrant aesthetic, something generally unconventional for 'alternative' music videos. When we were shooting the projector scenes, we took this scene from 'Vertigo' as a blueprint for what we wanted them to look like. Even though we were not using silhouettes in our video, we think this was a good initial idea of what these scenes could look like for us.

And of course the mannerisms and expressions of Fiona Apple - the original songwriter for 'Under The Table'!