As Laura Mulvey suggests, a majority of modern music videos objectify women in order to satisfy the male gaze. (The camera work is focused on the way in which a man would look at a woman, the women are often promiscuously dressed and are often objectified). However despite this, Ellie is the main character in our music video who is 13 years old and in no way did we use the male gaze in the video. We based our video around the strong narrative and plot, as most indie-pop music videos do rather than having performance domination. The young girl is represented as vulnerable and lonely, in white for a majority of shots to show her innocence and purity.
We used lots of high-angled shots to emphasise this loneliness, presenting her as a sweet character. In a way we used a stereotypical representation of a young girl, since obviously there are some children who feel as though they do not fit in with their family and seem invisible, without a voice. Yet music videos typically do not feature young girls in such a way where they dominate the video and it is an explanation of their life. The black and white effect adds to this purity, since we knew that we could explore the extreme dark and light aspects of the film in order to portray to the audience the dark nature of her situation with her father and yet her innocence against that.
When shooting the father, we used very dim lighting and attempted to capture only his silhouette in a dark doorway - firstly to create an enigma, overall things are far more intimidating when they are unknown or a partial mystery. Also to create the character of a traditional villain, the shot automatically seems intimidating and scary therefore the audience are more likely to feel empathy for the young girl.
During shooting, the representation of the characters was something we were constantly aware of. The opening shot of Ellie sat surrounded by the flashing lights, we thought particuarly important as it opens the video - therefore it is the aduiences' first impression of her as a character. The blackout beginning implies to the audience that firstly, their is darkness in her life and she may be from an unpleasant background. When the lights begin, and she is sat staring into the camera, surrounded we aimed to represent her as isolated and vulnerable. The lights symbolise the action that surrounds her, and how she feels as if she is sat in the midst of it all in the dark. We positioned the shot so a majority of the lights are in fact taller than her, thereby within the shot it emphasizes her youth and vulnerability of character. Since her gaze is locked onto the camera, she is represented as vacant and seperate from whatever action is going on in the scene.
I decided to look at Lana Del Rey's 'Summertime Sadness' for representation in a similar genre to our music video. Firstly because the video's main aspect of Lana, in similarity to how ours follows Ellie's character.
The background seems pure and almost heavenly with the tint applied, representing her as quite angelic and feminine. Yet the red tint has obvious connotations - love, desire etc. Taking the red as a representation of love, Lana is presented as deeply in love since her colouring is so deep and her surroundings being also tinted red suggest that love has changed her world. 
This shot uses the transition of smoke to introduce it, which firstly creates the impression of a clouded mind/confusion. This is emphasized by Lana's body language and positioning, as she is looking down away from the camera in the midst of smoke, since it implies that she is tiring of this. The dim lighting also implies a dark state of mind. Yet on the contrary, the smoke also represents fire and destruction - an implication that women in relationships are negatively affected by relationships. This is reiterated by the lyrics of the song, it begins as if Lana is describing a past story. 
