Music Video
Music videos under the indie genre generally fall under three categories: performance based, narrative with elements of performance, and narrative based. As our music video is narrative based it could be considered to conform to conventions associated with indie music. Bands such as Arctic Monkeys, in present times are most commonly known for having narrative based videos. One that we researched before making our music video was 'Leave Before the Lights Come On'. The Arctic Monkeys do not feature in this video. This is similar to our video as The Maccabees do not appear in any form within our video, other than through a poster on the wall. Narrative based videos are least common of the three categories and so we are in a sense developing the convention. Michael Gondry's music video 'Fell in Love With A Girl' by the indie-rock band The White Stripes is also a purely narrative/concept based video, not featuring a band, and so although i did not analyse this video in depth, by watching it i was (to an extent)
inspired by it.
inspired by it.
The narrative to our video initially appears to be a typical boy-girl love story. This conforms to ideas and themes within indie music as commonly the story-line is based on a love story with a problem and a happy resolution at the end. They generally incorporate Todorov's theory of there being five stages of a narrative. However, our music video develops this idea as we corrupt it by having the five stages being beneficial to the girl, but not an ordinary or even moral outcome. We also challenged the idea of a perfect love story to reveal themes of obsession and trying to capture ideal 'perfection'. We incorporated the post modernist view of challenging stereotypes. But, even with this we were 'inspired' to an extent by The Mystery Jets challenging the convention of a love story with their music video 'Half In Love With Elizabeth'. In their music video the male protagonist has a secret desire to be with the Queen Elizabeth, but still cares for his girlfriend. In our music video the girl challenges stereotypes by her child-like and obsessive nature as well as her actions, such as locking the boys in her wardrobe.
We challenged conventions with our cutting rhythm in relation to indie music but not music videos in general. Narrative indie music videos often appear almost film-like and so the cutting pace does not normally relate to the music. 'Leave Before the Lights Come On' by Arctic Monkeys is an example of this. However our music video cuts in relation to the music and so we challenge conventions of narrative indie music videos, but in the wider context narrative videos of other genres often do relate to the pace of the music such as pop artist Gwen Stefani's 'Cool'.
We also challenged conventions through the use of costume. Males' attire in indie music videos stereotypically appear somewhat disheveled and unkept, with examples being bands such as Kings of Leon, and The Kaiser Chiefs. However we decided to dress our male protagonist in shirts and scarfs to appear more grown up to highlight the great contrast between his mature state and her childish nature. But we also did it to further stress his changing appearance as the relationship progresses.
We decided to incorporate aspects of Goodwin's theory by having a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. During the music video the dolls eyes are shown in a close up whilst the music goes "the eyes, the eyes".
Magazine Advert
Our magazine advert generally conformed to conventions associated with indie advertisements. The font used for the band name was easy to read and situated at the top of the advert. This is common in not only adverts promoting Indie music but all types, The Killers advert for there live greatest hits album also does this as well as Jamie Cullum's 'The Pursuit' album. The album title being situated under the band name is also common, as shown in The Killers live greatest hits album. The idea of 'selling the artist' can be quite common within the indie genre with bands such as Razorlight doing so in the past, but this appears to be more bands under the sub-genre pop-rock. Many Indie bands do not have images of themselves on their adverts and so by us having two, small images on our advert of the band, but not being the main images we are in a sense developing the convention.
Digipak
Again, similarly to magazine adverts, digipaks either 'sell' the artist/band or don't by having obscure images sometimes relating to the album, but often not. Bands such as Twisted Wheel and the Verve's 'Urban Hymns' have images of themselves on their album. Our digipak does not 'sell' the artist as there are no images of the band on it. The back panel consists of just the track list. This highlights the importance of the music as there are no distractions just the name of the tracks. This is similar to Jack Penate's album 'Matinee' which although he appears on the digipak, he does not appear on the back where the track list is, there is no other distracting information on the back, showing that it is just about the music. Many bands under the indie genre don't have images of themselves on their digipaks/CD covers and so we are conforming to conventions of indie music. Bands such as Friendly Fires with there album of the same name and Foal's 'Antidotes'.
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