1. 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

2. 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.