evaluation question 1: conventions of the indie genre

Plain White T’s fall under the Indie Pop genre. There are a number of different conventions which are present in this genre which we followed in order to provide ourselves with a music video which could represent the indie pop genre.

The Indie genre is based on independence from mainstream music and the codes and conventions can change depending on the music video. However there are a number of conventions that are often frequent in indie band or artist music videos. For example there are often shots of the singer specifically or members of the band frequently throughout the video from different angles such as close up or long distance shots. This was learnt from watching a number of different music videos. One music video which particularly stood out was Ed Sheeran’s ‘Give me love’ (Acoustic version). This music video is compiled through multiple close ups of Ed Sheeran and his guitar. These gave us a large variety of shots which we could implement into our own video.

Another convention in many indie based music products is that the music video describes a story. This is present in many videos which we observed. It is particularly common in many of Coldplay music videos. For example paradise follows the story or an elephant escaping from a zoo to Africa to be with others of his kind, representing ‘Paradise’. Also the music video for ‘Yellow’ follows the story of a couple who experience a car crash. This was noted as the lyrics of ‘Hey There Delilah’ driven greatly by story. This also was the catalyst which allowed us to really begin to understand which shots we need to tell a story through both the lyrics and video.

Finally a convention which is somewhat related to the story basis is that the shots used in the music video are often related directly to the words. For example in Coldplay’s music video there are areas where the lyrics are displayed on a piece of cardboard. This shows a direct link between the video and the music which is not present in many music products where the video can be very different to the lyrics for a large portion of the music video.