Bruno Mars' music videos normally consist of two male characters; a male and a female due to the majority of his songs being romantic. 'Just the way you are', 'The lazy song' and 'It will rain' all have a female companion, however one song does not; 'Grenade'. At first, as a group we wanted to subvert what Bruno Mars' usual does by just having one sole performer, acting as Mars, however we decided that this would not be as effective as we would hope due to the narrative becoming to strained. 'Marry You' does not have a music video, therefore no guidance could be taken from it, something that acted in the groups favour as the video was 100%, completely original.
However, as a group we thoroughly researched Bruno Mars' existing media products so that we could enhance our personal ideas. Many of Mars' videos are filmed in outside locations, although in considerably depressing areas due to the majority of his songs being about heartbreak. Yet, interestingly enough 'Marry You' completely subverts all of Mars' previous work as it is about happy-go-lucky, young and impulsive love. Therefore, we decided that we would use the idea of filming in outside locations, but make them bright and extremely spacious with the perfect place being on our doorstop; Abbey Ruins. However, to counteract the happiness that is between the couple in the outside locations we used a home to show the struggles faced between the couple as the actress is planning the wedding with the help of her family, this is where the conflict comes in, giving the narrative even more depth. I believe that this challenges Mars' existing media products as there is two sides to the story; conflict and happiness, whereas usually in Mars' videos it is mostly conflict.
Another aspect of Mars' existing media products that we used to our advantage was Mars' body language throughout his videos. During most of his videos he is sitting or standing and singing directly to the camera, an element that was included in our video. Mars' movements were mimicked throughout our interpretation of the video, purely so there could be a link between ours and his videos.
Although the lyrics of the song are very simplistic, we wanted our video to have depth to it, something that is often found within music videos as they have multi-layered story lines. A prime example of this is FUN with their video 'We are young' alongside many of Mars' very own videos there is a great deal of depth within the narrative.
The editing of the video also conforms to the required conventions of a music video and especially to existing media products. As a group we decided that it was better to try and limit the amount of transitions used within the final edit so that it wouldn't dazzle the audience or make them grow tired of the video itself. The amount of locations used within the video also conform the the usual requirements of a music video. However, throughout my research I have noticed that using a limited amount of locations has become increasingly popular, again 'We are young' uses only one location as well as Bruno Mars' 'The lazy song', something that in hindsight I would have perhaps liked to have done.
Although our music video does generally conform to a Bruno Mars' video, we did however, challenge his existing media products by using several locations instead of just the one, and also created conflict within the video. However, I believe that the song in itself, although simplistic, was hard to create the right kind of video, as we needed to decide as to whether or not we would subvert or conform to the normal techniques that Bruno Mars' uses.
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