Theory Research - The Representation of Gender in You Me At Six videos. (Stay With Me).

Stay with Me was You Me At Six's fourth official single, directed by Frank Borin and shot in California. In terms of narrative and musical genre, it is the closest song to Finder's Keepers, both of which feature narrative and performance elements, and were released as acoustic tracks later on. Also similar to Finder's Keepers, both songs were written by the band's lead singer and are about relationships breaking down; making it an obvious choice to have my target demographic look at.

We first thought that the video was going to use some of Propp's character types, with regard to the 'villain' and the 'damsel in distress' character as shown through one of the opening shots. By having the boy in the car in silhouette and behind the girls, nearly out of the frame, it gave a 'stalker' impression. The girls in the focus group also noted how the focus of the camera is pulled to the car to emphasize that it's there, giving power and dominance to the male character. The boys commented on the feminine way in which the female was presented; long hair and a pale pink strap top, connoting innocence. Both genders agreed that it was an interesting opening as it left the audience memebers wondering as opposed to spelling the story out straight away; something which I must consider whilst composing and finishing off my opening sequence.

My focus group were then quite suprised by how the video progressed. The male protagonist appeared to be burying an old photograph, which gave us some background context to the situation, something both genders of my focus group liked. By placing him centre frame the boys commented on how he had power and was the one effectively getting rid of the relationship, but the girls argued that, with the context provided by the use of mise en scene, he appeared to be more defenceless and hurt than previously thought.

As the two stills on the left show, girls were presented as innocent and youthful throughout, which contrasted with the presentation of the boy, who was forcefully burying the photo of his past, the two girls seem to be much more nostaligic, the mise en scene of the teddy bear from childhood; connoting memories she perhaps can't let go of, and the framing of the close up, the laying down shows weakness perhaps, or how emotion takes over females much more than in men. Both genders said how this was nearly always the case in both film and music videos of this genre, and said that they would quite like it to be the other way round for a change. However the girls did say that the male protagonist in the video wasn't coming across as heartless, he had clear emotion, which they found to be an endearing trait.

We decided that the representation was a lot less controverisal than that of 'Save It For The Bedroom', however we all agreed that perhaps a 'role reversal' in the respect of the damsel in distress character would be interesting and welcomed in most cases. I personally also learnt that the narrative structure of You Me At Six's videos tends to be fairly simplistic, and not massively adventurous, something I must remember to adhere to in my editing process.