Music videos under the indie genre generally fall under three categories: performance based, narrative with elements of performance and narrative based. As our music is narrative with elements of performance based it could be said to conform and use the typical conventions associated with indie music.
The narrative to our video appears to be a boy-girl love story. This uses the conventions, ideas and themes within indie music as commonly the narrative is based on a love story with a problem and a happy resolution at the end. This shot introduces the audience to the couple having problems, so much so that the boy walks out. The facial expressions and the mise en scene show both characters’ emotions; the blue of the hoody begins to fade in, which develops upon the use of the emotion of sadness which is again typical of an indie style video.
In terms of Todorov’s five stages, in this video we develop on the stages as there is no stage one where a state of equilibrium is defined, but goes straight into the disruption to the equilibrium by an action or crisis. However the audience does not know what the action is, and so has no idea of the context of the situation apart from that they have had an argument. Throughout the video, the audience sees both characters recognising that there has been a disruption, and thinking about setting goals to resolve the problem, which is stage three. There is a medium shot of the boy lowering his hood and extracting his phone from his pocket, which then cuts to the girl holding her phone at an extreme close up, which then cuts again to an extreme close up of her phone which has just received a text saying ‘sorry’. This is stage four of the theory, where the character has attempted to repair the disruption. Finally, there is no stage five either as the audience does not see the reinstatement to the equilibrium.
In this shot, the character’s are around stage three of Todorov’s theory, where the character recognises that there has been a disruption, and linking to the narrative based on a love story, he is feeling regret and sadness for the argument. The hoody is still blue which conveys despair to the audience, and the background is faded out which also mirrors his emotions. The blurred cars in the background challenge the conventions of an indie music video as they are mostly simple and easy to understand without any kind of creative editing.
Performance shots use the conventions of an indie video of narrative with elements of performance. We have used mainly performance shots to sections of instrumental pieces and to the chorus’, which challenged the conventions of indie videos as such videos usually are only narrative based and often appear almost film-like. We put a spotlight on both of the performers as to show them in a better light and to emphasise their involvement in the video.
We decided to incorporate aspects of Goodwin’s theory by having a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. During this part of the video the lyrics are ‘you’ve got something to hide’ and the character is put out of sight by the tree, giving the impression of ‘hiding’. This develops on music videos as it is easy for the audience to understand what is going on at the beginning of the narrative of the video. In Taylor Swift’s video ‘Fifteen’ the lyrics to this shot is ‘as you walk through the door’, a convention which we have used in our video.
Another common convention of real media products we used in our video was the use of extreme close ups of instruments in order to match the tempo and beat of the song. Even thought it is not an indie video, an example if this would be in the video ‘Somebody told me’ by the Killers, where at 0.16 there is a shot similar to the one we have used.
By making parts of the video black and white gives the impression of a memory which was what we were trying to put across. This develops on the conventions of music videos as many artists use it for different effects depending on the style of the song and video. As stated already, our music video uses black and white to incorporate a memory feel, whereas artists like Lady Gaga may use this convention to add individuality, interest and change to the video.
We challenged the convention of cutting the shots in relation to the music which does not occur in indie videos but generally of music videos, where the cutting of the video does not relate to the music. The shots cut in and out on the beat, but because the shots are short the audience has the chance to know what is happening. The performance shots remind the audience that she is still singing and involved in the video, and the narrative shots carry on the story and his loneliness.
Similarly to a digipak, magazine adverts either ‘sell’ the artist, or include images which relate to the album. This magazine article develops of the conventions which is illustrated in the Paolo Nutini magazine article below. Our article includes a picture from the video ‘back to the start’ and the digipak so that the audience can link all of them and can recognise who the artist is at once. We included quotes from different magazines and newspapers which gives the album and artist a good name and assures the audience of the excellent reputation which the album has. The colours relate to the digipak which the Paolo Nutini poster somewhat does, as his albums are laid back and has an image of him on the front. They are similar in the way both of them advertise ways to listen to this particular artist’s music.
The digipak either ‘sells’ the artist or has images relating to the music on the album. Our digipak does not sell the artist as there is no image of her anywhere on it, unlike album covers such as Taylor Swift and Paulo Nutini and so we have challenged the conventions of a digipak of this genre. The back panel consists of a medium long shot of the two character’s in the ‘back to the start’ video which tells the audience that the album is about love and break ups. This is evidenced by the front cover of a character standing on their own. Also on the back cover are the rest of the song names, the barcode, copyright details and the record label logo. The logo gives the audience the idea of the genre of the album, as they can research or already have an idea of the artists the record label already supports.
The front cover is simple, and the colours stand out and the blue relates to the hoody of the character in the ‘back to the start video’. The yellow is purely to stand out and catch the eye of the audience. The inside sleeves consist of a picturesque image and on the left is a quote from ‘back to the start’ which is the debut single.
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