Skip to main content

Genre Selection

 So this was a rather quick and easy process. In the first 15 minutes of the team discussion, we came to the unanimous consensus on the genre, which would be *cue drumroll* alternative/indie rock. 

Yes. There is still a massive debate (for reasons beyond my comprehension) on whether indie should be considered a genre, but I personally believe that the style, vibe, element and everything that that particular music has evolved to possess can very much only be described as "indie". You can't not listen to an indie song and not be able to tell what it is. (There are more well-fledged arguments that I won't get into (for now)).

So, indie or independent music had been around since perhaps the 60s, but was mostly composed of underground groups and performers, being officially recognised in the 70s, and then receiving a popularity boost in the 80s. The term at that point was used to refer to post-punk and new wave music labels. It was also seen as something very counter-culture in nature - which it most probably was.

I've always been intrigued by indie music and indie artists for reasons I don't really know. Perhaps it's the way it's so non-commercialised (both the music and the artist) which is also why it's often very different from what we very often get to hear. It's almost revolutionary in the way that indie artists will express themselves however they want, in a very limitless way, and not owe anyone any explanation whatsoever. I felt that that is what I wanted to incorporate in my music video as well. My teammate Hira is a die-hard indie music admirer (her blog might've made that clear) and so she had great input when it came to deciding upon our genre. 

Indie music videos are characterised by the artists' unique creativity or thought, expressed mostly in very simplistic ways, with usually significantly lower budgets than mainstream music videos. The star image is often missing or kept to a minimum in indie music videos as the artists aren't associated with a record label and hence their priority is mostly the originality of their music rather than appealing to the mainstream public. So choosing indie as a genre meant that we could freely experiment and not restrict ourselves to a particular style in making the music video.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Critical Reflection Essay

  My essay of the critical reflection of my work in the Advanced Portfolio will mainly address the following compulsory questions: How do my products represent social groups or issues? How do the elements of my production work together to create a sense of "branding"? How do my products engage with the audience? How did my research inform my products and the way they use or challenge conventions? All of my products in the artist's promotion package - music video, digipak and social media - were all constructed after meticulous planning phases in order to effectively reach the audience. This included great consideration given to the sort of message or concept, and the social group that we wanted to represent through our music video. The song that we chose, "Party Police" is pretty straightforward - the lyrics are about a couple whose relationship is gradually deteriorating, and as we hear from her perspective, one of them is striving to hold it together by any me...
Post a Comment
Read more

Music Video Final Cut

Since, she has now dropped Media Studies, Hira emailed me the Premiere file of the music video as well as the video itself that she edited on the 9th and then after I had requested some changes, she sent me another version on the 10th. However, due to the fact that she no longer took the subject and hence the bigger communication gap, I decided to make some remaining changes and alterations to the video myself, which included rearranging some clips and adding a different opening scene: After that I colour graded some parts of the footage to add a slight vintage effect, but not too much. I did this by adjusting the "faded film" scale in the Lumetri colours tab, and adding a slight noise effect to some clips. For some clips I downloaded a VHS overlay to get a *drumroll* VHS effect, by placing the overlay on top of the clip and setting the blend mode to "Screen". I felt that this added the lofi, retro handicam effect that we were initially aiming for as well not just b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Social Media Page Research & Analysis

For our social media page, we decided to make our artist's account on Instagram. We had several reasons for this, the main one being our target audience. Our artist herself is supposed to be a "zennial" (gen z and millennial cusper) so naturally, our target audience, as also previously discussed during our research phase, is the age group 16-30 (including the secondary target audience). The primary target age group (late teens and early 20s) are significantly more present and active on Instagram. This is also why a majority of artists now, despite having accounts on both platforms, are more active on Instagram because they get greater engagement with their target audience. Secondly, Facebook appears to have a more conservative demographic and is subject to regulation by media watchdogs to a greater extent than Instagram. So considering our video contains a depiction of a lesbian couple, if it happens to fall under the viewership of people with conservative views (which is...
Post a Comment
Read more