R&P 27: Prop Research

Heya! We have now began to research different props that we could use for our music video.

Two of the most important props that we need are money and a virtual reality (VR) headset. We are planning to buy both of these online due to cost and convenience. For the VR headset, we have been looking on Amazon and have found a few possibilities so far:

We really like the VR headset shown in the top picture but realistically it is too expensive for us to buy, leaving us with the other two. We like both of them and they are both affordable. However, at the moment we are thinking of using the VR headset shown in the middle image because it has a nice, simple aesthetic which would be good for the aesthetic and mise-en-scene of our own music video.

We also need lots of fake money for our music video which is key for the 'Mafia' scene of our music video (level four). For this we have been looking on eBay:

The images above show two different stacks of money available for purchase on eBay that we are considering buying. The image at the top shows a stack of $100 that we could buy whereas the image at the bottom shows a stack of $50 available to purchase. They are both the same price and are affordable to us. At the moment we are thinking of buying the stack of $50 because $50s are more realistic than $100s.

As well as this, we also need other props. For the first 'level' of our music video which is the scene of the shop robbery, we need fake guns. For these we have been looking in different shops but have only found toy guns so far which look very childish, for example:

These are pictures of fake guns that we have found in different shops but so far we have not managed to find one that looks realistic enough so we are still looking. 


For the fourth 'level' of our music video are duffle bags, e.g.:

We need two duffle bags in this scene- one for the couple themselves and one for the 'Mafia' people. However, in this scene the couple will actually trick the 'Mafia' people and fool them into thinking that the bag that the couple give them is the one full of money. However, the couple actually switch the bags around and steal the one that is full of money. So we have decided to use duffle bags because these types of bags look conventionally like they could be filled with stolen goods which they are often used for in feature films. By using this particular bag, it will make it clearer to our audience what is happening in this scene.

Another prop we need for our music video is a poster showing the name and logo of our video game. At the very end of our music video we are going to show the boy taking off the headset and then show the poster of the video game hung up on his bedroom wall behind him. In order to do this, however, we need to create a poster. Below you are able to see images detailing the different steps of this process:

Above you are able to see the first step in the Photoshop process that we used to create our poster. We decided to use this photo of Kati (taken at the photoshoot of Kati that we did for our digipak) because of her body language- she stares directly into the camera pretending to hold a gun to her lips which conveys the element of our video game falling into the crime category. We also decided to give our video game the title 'Raid' in order to emphasise the theme of crime. In this image you can see how we wrote 'Raid' onto the photo then began to position it correctly.

Once we had positioned the title of the video game correctly onto our poster, we then added a slogan with it, saying "Will you be the next partner in crime?". The use of this specific slogan relates to the narrative of our music video which focuses on the romantic relationship between a boy and a girl as it represents how the boy is essentially the artist's 'next partner in crime'. After this we then added a background to our poster and this is the final result:

So those are the main props needed for our music video! We are still looking for some fake guns for our music video so come back again soon to find out what we are going to use for this!