PLANNING: Light and Dark

It's the eternal theme, found anywhere from Victorian Gothic Literature (Dr. Jekyll vs. Mr. Hyde) to science fiction (Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader) to popular ballet (Swan Lake) it even resonates in the common perception that everyone has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Ultimately the audience is compelled to support the light or 'goodie' in their quest to defeat the dark 'baddie'. Though this theme crops up over and over, resonating itself in many different forms, it is the imagery that is played on so frequently that I hope to investigate.

Perhaps the easiest way to gage this idea is by examining popular children's films which tend to come with a moral suggesting bad behaviour has consequences, and good, honest behaviour will ultimately triumph. Due to its young audience Disney are particularly good at emphasising the divide between the good and the bad through colour, most often white for good and black for bad. Its a combination that is not only used to illustrate the point to children but can be found time and again in Westerns where the troublemaker is decked in black usually sporting a black hat whereas the protector or protagonist is dressed in light shades to illustrate his superior moral standpoint.

Ariel and Ursula (The Little Mermaid 1989 Disney)

Undeniably the concept of allowing children to seperate good and bad characters through the way they are visually represented has been incredibly successful. To a young audience a character that looks nice generally is nice, there are rarely occasions whereby children are encouraged not to judge a book by its cover. Rathermore the act of making assumptions as to a character's behaviour and intentions based on thier appearance is crucial to the plot and in bringing about the moral at the end of the tale. It is not suprising then that this idea filters into much more than just childrens films. Though there is much more scope in an adult film to trick the audience by misrepresenting a character in the way they look and thus the assumptions made by the audience that they are a character of low moral standard. In fact this is a very commonly used tactic by filmakers. Who would have thought that Keyser Söze (Usual Suspects 1995) was the baby faced, stuttering 'Verbal' Kint? Ultimately audiences are encouraged to jump to conculsions about characters based on how they look, only then can a filmaker truly surprise the audience.

Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (Star Wars)

With this in mind, in my music video I aim to utilise the light/dark conventions to demonstrate a divide in the protagonist. Rather than using two characters to explore the good/bad divide, I'm going to use one to suggest a split in the character's own psyche. This is very much inspired by the theme of 'split personality' in many thrillers, for example Fight Club 1999 and Black Swan 2011. I feel this will give my piece a darker edge, which is synonomous with the work of inide artists whose videos tend to appeal more to a cult audience of followers rather than the bulk of mainstream audiences. As a result I am going to heavily rely on costume and lighting to create the contrast between the seemingly innocent light side of the protagonist and the dangerous dark side.