Planning Iconography

The Alice in Wonderland Novel 

At the beginning of our music video one of the actresses who plays the modern day or our version of Alice is going to be reading it because our video is loosely based on the concept of that story (i.e. The girl being led into London and blinded by the 'high life' which is spoken about in the lyrics of the song).
I think this will also help us give a subliminal message of innocence and dreaming since some of the themes of our story is how young/innocent minds are manipulated by the "dreams" that cities seem to promise.

The Vogue Magazine 
The Vogue Magazine we use which is also at the beginning of the video will appear when the Fashionista who in Alice in Wonderland terms stands in for the White Rabbit walks into the forest. The girl who was originally reading the Alice in Wonderland novel gets intrigued by the person passing through the forest and the evaluation of the book changing into the magazine hints at what's ahead.
Vogue is also targeted at a fashionable female audience which is the kind of clothes we want our fashionista to be wearing - this helps us out with Artist Representation as well as the Genre Conventions of R&B and Pop which stereo-typically have the artist wearing beautiful and desirable clothing which gives them status and makes them appear more attractive.


Walk of Fame Stars 


We're going to use stars in various shots throughout our video to
represent the journey to fame and success. We'll probably use them at vital parts in the video to show how our characters are getting closer and closer to fully being drawn into their dreams and going full in to achieve them - since the majority of our narrative is a girl who's not known anything about fame getting a glimpse at the less "simple life".

However, at the end of the video the 'Alice in Wonderland' persona will run away and backtrack on herself, moving further away from the journey of fame until she eventually ends up back in her simplistic life with her Alice in Wonderland book in the forest where we originally began for the setting.

Iconography in our actual video

In our music video, a vital piece of iconography that we used was the Alice in Wonderland Novel. Our initial aim was to make direct connections between the book and the theme of the video but as filming progressed and our editing developed, we've actually used a series of close ups and tracking shots placing emphasis on some of the important words an images. For example, I've extracted the key scene of Alice chasing the White Rabbit into Wonderland for the ideology behind our whole video so we've also included shots of visual images to connote this alongside words that relate to what our video is showing.
On a connotative level, it also shows the contrast in innocence between the scene the audience is used to seeing the star in (her bedroom) as oppose to the city of London which is much more open and in our video is portrayed to be dazzling yet confusing. The Alice in Wonderland book is mostly shown through close-ups to actually allow words from the story to actually capture the viewers attention first hand, highlighting some of the obvious themes throughout the narrative.

Another example of iconography was the gold star that was also included throughout the narrative. The first example of where it's seen is in various places in the artists (Alice's) bedroom such as on the wall, the mirror and the door. Each time it appears it displays a different piece of writing working in sync with the shots of the Alice in Wonderland novel to emphasize the theme to our audience.
The first star reads: "Once Upon A Time" which is classically how all fairy tales begin and also signals to the audience that the video has a story to it. However, it also goes against the conventions of an R&B video as the typical video in that genre would usually focus on maturer content such as expensive jewelry, both women and men in designer clothing and other materialistic objects of that sort such as cars, big houses and even money first hand. Meanwhile, our video is focusing on the negative sides of fame and that's what the iconography of the golden star focuses on. Towards the end of the video, the star appears again but this time being held by both the characters appearing in the video. They all have the advantages and disadvantages of fame of them while the two characters act as though they're being photographed in a police station which connotes how fame is almost like a jail sentence and restricts freedom. These ideologies go against the conventions of both R&B and Pop as they're not glamorizing a materialistic lifestyle nor do they have an upbeat feel to them as Pop videos often have.