Inspirational Music Videos; Bittersweet Sympthany// The Verve

We found inspiration from the track "Bittersweet Sympthany" by The Verve as it talks about the struggles people face as apart of the working class and the main themes of the song are that of class struggle and isolation from society.

Firstly the lyric "Tryna make ends meat, you're a slave to money, then you die." Is a brutally honest truth spoken by the mellow tones of Richard Ashcroft. Almost with a drone to his voice, the notes he hits within his key accompany the monogomy of the lyric creating an essence of dispair and hopelessness. This links with how many members of the proletariat feel today within society and expresses the hatred people have towards the class culture we find ourselves in; yet also expresses people's unwillingness to change how the society is run. This links with our music video as the song we have used; "Fightback" by Fold, realises this and is used as a mechanism calling to arms the youth of today to fight back and create a class struggle of which to rid the lower classes of the oppressive society in which we find ourselves trapped in today. Much like famous comedian Russell Brand in his interview with Jeremy Paxman, the song calls for a revolution almost, in which the people stand up, fight back and say we no longer wish to be apart of this repressive, money grabbing society that is designed to put the world's majority of money into the 1%'s pocket.

Secondly the music video for Bittersweet Sympthony dipicts front man Richard Ashcroft alone walking a retail street that symoblises capitalism and being completely oblivious to it. Ashcroft walks into many passers by, sometimes gliding past, sometimes crashing into them, either way he completely ignores the action and carries on walking ignoring the world around him and singing down the camera. This indicates Ashcroft's self inflicted isolation from society and demonstrates how he no longer wishes to be apart of the capitalist reigeim he lives under. The effectiveness of this is that it allows the viewer to see as a visual representation of what the song is about, isolation and rebellion. Within our music video we aimed to replicate this by isolating our protagonist and making him appear to be oblivious to the world around him. By doing this, similar to The Verve's music video, our protagonist demonstrates his will to break away from society's set norms and values and release himself into a new world that is brighter, hense the dream aspect of it, our protagonist is searching for his paradise. I feel that this links to the song we have selected by Fold as it states that we as a generation need to stand up and fight back. This is never necessarily acheived through violent means as shown by legendary protestors and activists such as Gandhi and Dr. King who's peacful protests brought about the abolishment of the British Empire's presence in India and Civil Rights for all respectively.

Still Showing Ashcroft's obliviousness to the world around him, symbolising a retreat from society and a rebellion from it's oppressive ways.



Locations (Unfinished)

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule

·         Thursday September 25^th :

This was our first day of filming in which we decided to get our shots from a moving vehicle in early as we had a long drive from our school (CNS) to our first location St James’ Hill, Thorpe. The journey we undertook took us through the heart of Norwich’s city centre a prime example of retail dominance in the UK and a great representation of a repressive Capitalist city. This was relevant to our music video because our music video and track choice is all about the student cuts and the following protests that insued back in 2011 named “March For The Alternative”; and the way the two intertwine is that the cuts show a prime example of the government no longer being a service to the people and becoming a money making mechanism to generate as much profit as possible due to the vast amounts of debts they’re in so try to bleed as much money from students as possible and parallel to this action giving students less bank loans to help them do so and trying to focus on rebooting the dying high street retailers that the economy depends so much upon.



Above: Road side view of St James’ Hill. Below: Mapped route of our journey through the heart of Norwich City Centre, Note Chapelfield, Theatre Royal and Anglia Square Shopping Centre all come past our route.

• Thursday October 2nd:

On this day the weather was pleasent so we as a team decided to film the segment that required the use of my local park, we had to ensure our timing was perfect as the park becomes full to the brim of primary school children between 15:15 and 16:15 . We managed to arrive at 13:00 and the ambient lighting was perfect; the way the clouds sat letting glimmers of crying light down gave a strong impression of a heaven/ paradise commonly discussed in religions such as Christianity, Catholisism, Judaism and Islam. This was vital to our filming as this representation of the heavens is seen in all major religions and is one of the only things that unites a very differing and hostile community. Similarly the government's cuts upon student loans and fees united a very hostile group as young people all have their own cliques and beliefs such as any subculture as described by Jean Baudrillard; who states that in a post modern world such as ours we all have regenerated sub cultures in which we try to belong to so that we can feel individual and correct. Therefore, similar to the ideology of heaven and after life uniting the big religions, the cuts and protests, especially "March For the Alternative", united all these media and capitalist generated subcultures to fight back against the government oppressing them.

Continuing with the imagery the clouds created in our shots; the ideology of heaven links heavily to our music video as it creates a sense of tranquility and paradise where we see our protagonist, in his dream, wondering around this heavenly location, the park.

The park represents the protagonists childhood and longing for a return to a much simpler time of when he was a child, and the weather helps create the essence of tranquility and calmness that goes hand in hand with childhood and that is what, for a moment, our protagonist is longing for.