Would You Be So Kind

Dodie (Original)

Eden Maybank (created artist)

Background

The song is originally from the indie/pop/folk artist Dodie Clark and was released on her YouTube
channel ‘doddleoddle’ in 2016 then released on her EP ‘You’ the following year. The song is 3
minutes long, and the video released was purely performance.

Summary

A girl in a white flowered shirt sits next to another girl on a bench, she tries to tell her how she loves
her but the girl simply walks away, prompting her to chase after her. She follows her crush around
desperately losing her to only find her and lose her again. She tries to convince her that they are
made for each other, making and showing her a love story but is again rebuffed. She tries to make
love, crafting love heart after love heart with all of them failing in some way (paper tearing, looking
awful, having a horrid comment on them etc) before she just grabs a scrappy heart is desperation.
She tries to pin it onto the girl with string, but it falls to the ground. Upset, the girl gives up, not
knowing that someone has found her heart on the floor and is following the string back to her. The
music video is a hybrid, with a clear narrative and elements of performance.

Inspiration

I was inspired primarily by the lyrics of the song, Dodie is known to have quite complex lyrics were, if
you sit and just listen to the song long enough, you can start to piece together a story. The idea of a
love heart on a string that needs to be followed is inspired by the age old myth or idea that we all
have some sort of invisible string or line attaching ourselves to someone else- some kind of soul
mate being in a romantic sense, as explored in the music video, or platonically.

Themes and representations and concept

I wanted to explore the idea of fake or unrequited love; when you believe someone is the perfect
person for you, despite them never giving them the time of day. And how, eventually, true love or
love with good intentions, can come when you least expect it. There are themes of love being this
unexpected but natural thing like the weather that you have to go through it because you have no
control over love itself but can control what happens afterwards. This will be portrayed through the
natural location when shooting and also feature on the artist’s website, for example through the
gallery.
Locations

- Table
- Withy Copse

Almost all shooting locations are set in nature, minus one scene in which the main character is
making her own love hearts at her desk to give to the girl she is in love with. This could be
considered quite normal, but this is the only scene not outside, mirroring the inorganic idea of
crafting fake love featured in the scene. The natural scenes suggest the idea of how love is a natural
force. Scenes when the girl is desperately trying to make the first girl fall in love with her, the sky is
over cast and the wind is blowing. This use of pathetic fallacy portrays the idea that the love is
unstable or doomed to fail. I did this by filming in a barren field in September, showing the wind
blowing in the trees and the grass to create a sense of restlessness. The weather in the final scenes,
however, is brighter and sunnier. These scenes were filmed first, during June and the hottest time of
the year; thanks to this the whole scene is almost glowing, suggesting that this new pairing is much
better and healthier, represented in the flourishing green background.

Target Audience and Demographic

The target audience set by the exam board is 16-25 years old. They are also culturally sophisticated,
thus able to understand quite complex ideas about love and how it effects a person. The AB
demographic means that they could be in jobs or aiming towards “Higher & intermediate
managerial, administrative, professional occupations.” The audience will also be old enough to have
felt these ideas of confusing love for the first time, or at least remember their first time. This, paired
with the cliché love story, relates to the younger demographics once naïve ideas of how simple love
appeared to be.

I have chosen to upload my music video through the video uploading site, Youtube. With the first
video ‘Me at the Zoo’ was uploaded 23th April 2005, the site hasn’t stopped growing since with now
has 1.9 billion monthly users worldwide and 500 hours of content uploaded every minute around
the globe. Due to this and the history of not only indie artists making their big break on the easy to
use video website (Dodie Clark, Troye Sivan, Jacob Collier, The Weekend, 5 Seconds of Summer etc) I
wanted my created artist, Eden Maybank, to be a part of this rise to stardom journey. This gives the
audience a chance to feel like they helped and supported an unknown artist to the mainstream, but
knows that they knew them before they ‘became famous’
Lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ypnr33sEmg