Skip to main content

Keeping Up With the Conventions

        Codes and Conventions in            Alternative/Indie Rock Music Videos


Type of Music Video

Indie rock music videos appear to be predominantly performance-based, however several indie artists explore conceptual and narrative-based videos as well. 

Performance-based:

Everytime // boy pablo
This music video is purely performance-based, showing the band performing in one fixed location, with no other interventions.




Are You Bored Yet // Wallows (ft. Clairo)
This music video adds a slight twist in performance as, apart from band members performing on the stage, the crowd is shown lip-syncing the song with vague (almost blank) expressions.



Conceptual-based:

Graffiti // CHVRCHES
This music video revolves around the artist reminiscing her first love, and contains various sequences of her and the aforementioned first love. The use of elements such as floating objects or people that recur throughout the video add to the overall concept of romanticising love.




Sunflower // Rex Orange County
The music video for Sunflower is also concept-based in the way it portrays various settings and events that seem to have little or no coherence to be part of a narrative, for instance the artist running away from a few guys and then suddenly being their friend.




Narrative-based 

Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High // Arctic Monkeys
In this music video we see proper linear narrative from the perspective of Alex as the main character, who gets drunk at a bar and repeatedly texts a girl named Stephanie while walking to her apartment. In his drunken state of mind he sees hallucinations of sorts, all of which involve the girl in explicit scenarios with people he sees on the street during his walk.  



Robbers // The 1975

Robbers contains a fledged out broken narrative which portrays the toxic relationship of a couple. We see the video cutting between shots of the couple in their "happy" and "joyful" moments and the times where they argue and fight. It proceeds to show them deciding to rob a store at gunpoint in order to cover their drug addiction. The narrative ends with the guy getting shot and, even though it's not shown, it can be reasonably inferred that he eventually bleeds to death or dies due to the pain. 





Editing and Special Effects

Most of the music videos above have a similar feel to them in terms of the visual aesthetics. Graffiti, Everytime and Are You Bored Yet? have vintage or retro aesthetics. The camera seems to be not very high quality, which could either really be the case or effects are added to make them look vintage, as if from old tapes and recording, or a VHS camera, which adds to the overall nostalgic element that is associated with alternative/indie music.
Van Etten's Seventeen uses a vintage film effect, as seen especially from 0:54 to 1:10.



Camera Shots and Movements

Indie rock music videos rarely use close-up because indie artists don't really need to have that much of a star image, but still use a variety of shots, mostly mid-shots or long shots so that the band can be seen performing, or to establish the setting for the audience since that plays a big role in indie music videos.


This music video for "Motion Sickness" by Phoebe Bridgers shows different shots, with the camera focused on her for most of the video, but bringing attention to the background as well.



Many music video like the one above use hand-held camera sort of movements that give the video a more raw and unfiltered look. This is also seen in Arctic Monkeys' "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?". 

Mise en Scene

The mise en scene in alternative/indie rock music videos plays a great role in establishing the identity of the artist or group, and also contributing to the "indie" vibe. These "vibes" however can be portrayed in various ways. For instance the music video for "These Days" by Wallows uses a very bright and aesthetic colour palette, with complementing warm colour tones - yellow, orange, red etc. The props in the background such as vinyl records, cutouts covering a wall, also add to the pop-retro vibe.


Yonaka's "Bubblegum" on the other hand uses a more darker, lowkey-grunge aesthetic which stays consistent with the image of original alt rock bands. This is why the mise en scene of the video - settings, colour palettes and costumes - may look overused and typical.





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