Evaluation: Development of Ideas

Over the course of the project - despite meticulous planning, we have adapted and developed our initial idea for our music video. At times, we were reluctant to change our idea - mostly, the idea worked, but lacked particular elements and each individual time, we would evaluate what we had and what we needed and voted on whether to keep or change our idea.

Although this method was time-consuming, it helped show our groups dedication to achieving the best possible product. I've chosen to show the progression from our initial idea to our final video through evaluating possibly the three main themes we developed and explored throughout the project.


1. Jealous Lovers

Our original idea was to simply take the songs lyrics and try to construct a narrative from them; we annotated (annotations are compressed to being highlighted in green below)  them to see what themes and possible narratives we could extract:

"I'm in the business of misery, let's take it from the top

She's got a body like an hourglass that's ticking like a clock

It's a matter of time before we all run out

But when I thought he was mine she caught him by the mouth

I waited eight long months, she finally set him free

I told him I couldn't lie, he was the only one for me

Two weeks and we caught on fire

She's got it out for me but I wear the biggest smile

Whoa, I never meant to brag

But I got him where I want him now

Whoa, it was never my intention to brag

To steal it all away from you now
But God, does it feel so good

'Cause I got him where I want him now

And if you could then you know you would

'Cause God, it just feels so It just feels so good

Second chances they don't ever matter, people never change

Once a whore, you're nothing more, I'm sorry, that'll never change

And about forgiveness we're both supposed to have exchanged

I'm sorry honey but I passed it up, now look this way
Well there's a million other girls who do it just like you

Looking as innocent as possible to get to who they want

And what they like, it's easy if you do it right

Well I refuse, I refuse, I refuse!

Whoa, I never meant to brag

But I got him where I want him now

Whoa, it was never my intention to brag

To steal it all away from you now
But God, does it feel so good

'Cause I got him where I want him right now

And if you could then you know you would 'Cause God, it just feels so

It just feels so good
I watched his wildest dreams come true

And not one of them involving you Just watch my wildest dreams come true

Not one of them involving

Whoa, I never meant to brag

But I got him where I want him now
Whoa, I never meant to brag

But I got him where I want him now

Whoa, it was never my intention to brag

To steal it all away from you now
But God, does it feel so good

'Cause I got him where I want him now

And if you could then you know you would

'Cause God, it just feels so

It just feels so good"

Official 'Misery Business' music video

2. Travelling

As we felt that our first idea was too boring, we wanted to try something more unconventional. We took direct inspiration from a music video that we found during our research stage, 'Closer to the Edge' by 'Thirty Seconds to Mars' (below). Near-identical in terms of genre and target audience to our chosen song, the video features the band travelling from locations on their recent tour. This lent us the idea to show the band 'travelling' to a location such as band practice.

'Closer to the Edge' official music video by 'Thirty Seconds to Mars'

3. Obsessed Fan

Our final idea was developed through learning several important aspects of constructing an effective music video. This was done by understanding the feedback that we received from our audience; we wanted to introduce the audience to something interesting and challenging - which would hopefully effectively engage the audience; something that our video's ambiguous and visually striking narrative hopefully achieved.

Stills from our Narrative