Joy Division – DisorderBy Joel Colborne (Producer/Cast Member), Jonny Hughes (Director) and Callum Moreman (Cinematographer)

The Brief: To create a promotional package for the release of an album. This package must include a music video for a single, a digi-pak with album artwork etc. and a magazine advert for the package.

Music Video Synopsis: A narrative/concept video following a character’s attempted cold-turkey recovery from addiction. Think of Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) and Requiem For A Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000) compressed into an Anton Corbijn style music video.

Target Audience: Our core target audience is youth of age 15 – 24, in an attempt to introduce Joy Division to a new era. Our secondary audience is the existing Joy Division fans of an older age. As our package features content from a band from the late 70s, it makes sense that we try and target a new audience well still attempting to keep old fans pleased. We hope both old and young fans alike will find the package in some way relatable.

Genre: Joy Division were a post-punk band of the 1970’s. This genre is an experimental one so an artistic music video would perfectly suit it. We plan to stick to the conventions of Post-Punk as a genre and Joy Division as a band, but also add extra market appeal for a modern audience. Anton Corbijn (known for his directing of many U2 and Depeche Mode videos as well as Ian Curtis’ biopic Control (2007)) is another key influence so his themes and techniques are aspect that will be included. Most importantly to the song and band are the very dark themes that their music explores, so clearly their music videos should do likewise.

Locations for Filming: Our music video includes many different locations – some literal, some just representing the different emotions in our protagonist’s mind-frame.

The Bridge – Influenced from the front cover of Joy Division’s The Best Of album, which shows the band stood on a bridge with snow underfoot. Ideally snow would feature in our video, but this looks unlikely currently. Our bridge scene will feature at the start and end of the video.

The Bedroom – This is the setting of the cold turkey scene. Taking particular influence from the cold turkey scene in Trainspotting, we plan to show our protagonist going through the motions as he battles the addiction. We plan to

use overlays of the character in different positions to create a sense of disorientation.

The Street – As the bass kicks in, the protagonist stumbles out his doorway instantly showing his lack of control. He then lights a cigarette and walks down the street – possibly the use of slow motion as he looks into the camera. This scene will be very useful for anchoring the setting.

The Woods – Our first isolated location is the woods. In this scene the protagonist is lost amongst the trees that surround him. We feel that some interesting framing can be used well here.

The Urban Wasteland – We didn’t want all our isolated scenes to be rural locations so we felt this would make a nice contrast for the middle section of the song. Using an abandoned outdoor car park,

our protagonist will be alone in the centre, with large industrial buildings being visible behind him. We also felt we get some interesting shots with a train in the background, as the car park is near Leeds City Station.

Malham Cove – This location will be ideal for artistic iconic imagery, and also will create an extreme sense of isolation. The contours in the limestone will suit black and white with heavy contrast very well. This is our hardest location for filming at as it is the least accessible. Wide angle

shots here would look great.

Confined Setting (Cupboard) – This scene will inter-cut other sections of the video acting as a contrast. Here we intend to create a feeling of being trapped and trying to break out. The actual location of an under-stairs cupboard will not be recognisable – it will just act as a box that he is trying to escape from.

Key Props/Costume: As we are slightly signifying links between our character and Ian Curtis we plan to include key aspects of his character. Our character wears a long trench coat, which was a very iconic piece of clothing for Joy Division’s late singer. Fashionable once more currently, this will act on two levels; those who know Joy Division will recognise the link to Ian Curtis, and it will secondly appeal to the current target market. Our protagonist smokes a lot throughout the video. Curtis was renowned for being an obsessive smoker – even when he could not afford it.

Mise en Scene: Obviously in many of the outdoor locations set-dressing will not be an option. We intend the video to have a timeless feel therefore not necessarily signifying the 80’s but trying to not signify it as belonging to certain era at all. Basically we don’t want the audience to really be aware of the year the video is set. The bedroom will be set dress so that the audience can identify the protagonist’s

disorganisation, and slight signifiers of his addiction. Again we don’t want to use shots of items that look out of place and era. The confined cupboard will be empty, with a strobe light being used to create the flashing effect and subtly signify Ian Curtis’ epilepsy.

Make-up: Our protagonist will probably have eye-make up on to signify their drug addiction. This will only be in the cold-turkey

to help signify what is actually going on.

Notable Shots/Camera Techniques: We plan to use many artistic shots in our video to create more of a short art film than simply a music video. The video will be filmed in colour, but edited in black and white – a key colour scheme for Joy Division. We have taken influence from Requiem for a Dream as mentioned earlier, and plan to use Darren Aronofsky’s key technique of using a Snorricam. A Snorricam attaches the camera to the protagonist, and then faces towards his or her own face. This creates deep emotion in a sequence. We plan to use many extreme close up shots again to create a lot of emotion and also a sense of claustrophobia. In contrast we also plan to use extreme long shots to represent the theme of isolation. The different depth of shots will help anchor the changing moods of our protagonist. We are also experimenting with the idea of using different styles of cameras, a technique often used by

Anton Corbijn. We have found that the iPhone has a great application for filming in the style of 8mm. This will contrast extremely well with the HD footage. Another idea similar to this is the possible inclusion of a fish eye lens to create extreme wide angle shots.

Digipak Design: Our Digipak design takes influence from our music video. Linking colour schemes and concepts across different items is a realistic technique used by bands in the industry. We have looked at Joy Division’s existing artwork, and this has been very useful in making sure that our design would fit in with their previous work. Key characteristics of Joy Division album art is the use of a thick black border around the main image, which is often black and white. Another convention they use is the

deliberate non-inclusion of track listings on the back of the album. This is another idea that we will use for our work. In terms of imagery, we have taken influence from the book cover of Deborah Curtis’ Touching from a Distance (a biography of her husband and Joy Division singer Ian Curtis), which depicts Ian stood

smoking a cigarette and looking directly into the camera. We plan to have our protagonist stood in a similar manner with a confined urban background such as council houses behind him, and on the back cover using the same set up except taking the photo from behind the singer showing the back of his head. The background this time will be an isolated rural location, again showing the contrast in his mood swings. Ideas for the inside include imagery in the style of their album Unknown Pleasures showing what’s going in inside the protagonist’s mind – possibly featuring imagery of a brain.

Ideas for Magazine Ad: We plan to include our advert for the Digipak in magazines such as Mojo, NME, Classic Rock, Rolling Stone, and Q. We will produce two different versions of the advert varying in size so we can we be realistic to the current market. In terms of design we currently have a few ideas which all link to the music video. At the moment we are considering the motif of both urban and rural locations. One possible idea is on one page having a shot of the protagonist stood in an urban wasteland and on the following page of the magazine would be the same shot with a rural background such as Malham Cove. A variation of this could be one shot that

shows both aspects. Another idea was a more abstract shot of an industrial location. This was influenced by an early promo poster for Joy Division. Our final idea was similarly influenced by another photograph found on the Internet. The picture shows an explicit piece of graffiti about Joy Division, we feel that an idea similar to this would create a great advert and instantly grab the reader’s attention.

Further Notes of Significance: In addition to the aforementioned contents of the package, we also plan to produce additional items. Initial ideas for such items are a bonus DVD to go inside the Digipak, a vinyl edition of the album, and also a short television advertisement, which

would appear on music channels etc. As well as this we plan to create a blog which will act as website for our record company “New Transmission Records”.

Contact Details: newtransmissionrecords@hotmail.co.uk