Question One

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media production

To discover ways in which we could conform to or challenge the conventions we had to research into different genres and videos to identify the conventions. We Looked at different videos of different genres in order to identify the distinctive conventions of our choses genre; Indie. During the

research into my chosen genre for my music video, I found that in many videos of this genre including ‘Josh Record’, ‘Mumford and Sons’ ‘Kodaline’ and ‘Frank Hamilton’ included outdoor settings and there was a feel for nature in each of the videos. Also there was a significant use of natural light which shows that these artist are not superficial, they want to be closer to the audience, creating a relatable environment for the consumer. This relatability also comes from the storylines that the indie genre tends to have. By doing this it creates more of an interest for the audience. A good example of this would be Kodaline’s ‘All I want’ which is a two part music video. There are underlying links to lyrics and visuals, they are not as apparent as they are in pop videos, through looking into the Indie Genre I found that the colour pallet was very similar for each video of the same genre. By using monotone,

sepia, brown colour tones I felt as though they add to the emotion of the video, which compliments the storylines that tend to run through indie music videos. Our final product conforms to the indie genre through the fact that our video tells a story in which the audience can engage with, we chose a narrative that would leave clues throughout the whole video but never fully give away the full story. The narrative we chose was a mother and son relationship and the conventional stories that crop

up frequently in many different genres, as well as Indie, are love stories so we wanted to stray away from the typical love story and explore the parental kind of love that seems to be lost. We used projection in order to show this parental love, we chose to use projection as it was a discreet way of portraying the love in the video. We challenged the conventions of this genre, however we still conformed to that fact that there is a storyline. In our music video, we adjusted the colours to some shots in black and white but then contrasted them with scenes that are in colour. By doing this we are showing that the black and white shots, the emotions are heightened and impulsive, but the shots that are in colour are reflective of what has happened, and that our character is reflecting on the impulsive behaviour that happened in the black and white. Music videos for the indie genre tend to have points that the emotions are heightened further with the use of slow motion. We included this use of editing in our music video alongside the use of black and white as we felt that the narrative was very heartfelt therefore by adding these different aspects, the emotions were amplified. We used black and white to determine the main characters

thoughts and actions for example, we used black and white for the dancing and in the reverse scenes at the end; we used sepia tones when at the beginning when the arguments happen.

Lip syncing isn’t widely used in the indie genre as this may take away from the realistic feel for the video, the links between lyrics and visuals are mainly through the narrative. However in our music video, we decided to make use of lip syncing to form a relationship between our character, the lyrics and the narrative. An example of this would be where he is sitting in the car which gives the connotations that he is going to leave during

the lyrics “I’ll carry your story wherever I may go”, by doing this we are challenging the conventions of the indie genre. There are also moments in which the visuals are symbols for the narrative, the first chorus the dancers reach out there hands which could symbolise the mother and how he is reaching out to him. Overall there are moments in our music video in which we conform to the indie genre, we did this to secure that it is within this genre however we do challenge the ideas of the genre, to show that we are able to challenge the continuous conventions and still show it is indie.