The document summarizes the creative process behind a student music video project for an indie rock band. It describes how the students researched conventions in indie rock music videos, such as slow camera cuts, close-ups, and point-of-view shots. It also discusses the inclusion of instruments, costumes, urban/rural settings, split-screening, and a mix of performance and narrative elements aligned with audience expectations. Overall, the document reflects on how researching comparable music videos and products helped the students understand genre conventions and create a final music video that effectively captured the indie rock aesthetic.

1. Cassie Vint.

3. Camera angles/shots
After researching our chosen genre, Indie Rock, we looked through music videos of the same genre to see what linking codes
and conventions they have. As a result we found that most videos have slow cuts and include a lot of point of view shots and
close ups, the also contained a mix of performance and narrative shots. The slow shots linked in with the tempo of the music
keeping a continuous look and going in time with the song.
Kings Of Leon – Back Down South
Mid Shots
The Kooks – Naive
Our Music Video
Our Music Video
• In these shots the mid shots are used to establish the
• Both of these shots include a focus on the main singer of the members of the band and the instruments they play,
band, the are mid-shots showing their facial expressions. the enables the audiences to recognise each individual
This became a convention in indie music videos as they tend band member. We have thought about this and made
to use shots with portray and show how they are feeling so sure that in our video that all members would be
the audience can relate to them. captured individually playing their instruments.

4. Mise en scene
• Another obvious convention which we have conformed • Another convention included in the Mise en scene is
to is Mise en scene, specifically props and costume. As the costume. Although we already had an idea of what
an indie band, props is a big deal such as instruments. costume was stereotypical of our genre by the
All indie band have a stereotype to play the drums and questionnaire. We took it into our own hands to
guitar so including this in a shot was important. research what costumes bands wore in other music
videos.
Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man Arctic Monkeys – Teddy Picker
Our Music Video Our Music Video

5. Setting
• Another convention is the setting, while researching through different indie/rock genre music videos we found that the setting tend
to be urban/rural. We included this type of setting in our music video during the narrative part as the performance would need to
take part in a studio as this is where the musical instruments would be accessible.
• Also as the indie genre tend to be less well-known so their budgets tend to be less. Also indie bands rely more on their music getting
them out there than their videos drawing attention, so having a cheaper music video tends to be the best option so more focus is on
their music. This means they can’t afford high end studies and afford to go town popular places.
• So our video greatly develops the conventions of setting in an indie/rock music video because of the basic studio where they
perform and the rural/urban setting during the narrative.
The Kooks – Ooh La Arctic Monkeys – Brick By Brick Bombay Bicycle Club – Always Like This
Our Music Video

6. Split Screening
• We wanted to make our music video different and fun. By looking through other music videos we came across a music video by
Example, this song/video involved a lot of split screening and it was very fun to watch. We wanted to have this in our music video so
decided to include a split screen.
• First of all it was very had to get to grips with how to do the split screening but after we had completed the split screening we found
that it become very effective and was a nice part of the music video as it added fun to it.
• I felt that it was a way of connecting the members of the band without them actually being together at the same time, it was fun to
create and film. However, when we first filmed with the split screening we realised that the length of each film wasn’t long enough so
this needed us to go back and re film to make sure that the length was film was correct.
• Overall, it became a really fun clip to put into our music video, this is also how we wanted to present our band
Example – Kick Starts Plain White T’s – Hey There Delilah
Kings Of Leon – The Bucket Our Music Video

7. Combining performance and narrative
• This was our main idea as from the audience questionnaire we found that people expected to see both performance and
narrative in the indie/rock genre. This made us become careful on the setting we were to choose as we had to make sure
that they suited our chosen genre.
• For our performance part we chosen a dark room with little lighting, after researching through other music videos of the
same genre we found that this type of setting was obvious.
Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man Kings Of Leon – Pyro Our Music Video
• It also came apparent that a lot of the narrative setting were outside and or/ in a very different place to the performance so
it was easy to distinguish the setting and performances and narratives.
Mumford & Sons – Winter Winds The Kooks – Ooh La Our Music Video

8. Comparable products
• At the start we researched music videos of the same genre to see what was consistent between different music videos, this would make
it clear to us as to what we should include in our product if it were to capture the audiences attention. In the ancillary texts we
compared 5 music videos, 5 CD covers and 5 advertisements this enabled us to gain knowledge of the generic codes and conventions.
CD Covers
The Verve The Kooks
• The back cover of The Verve album shows the band messing around and
having fun, not taking anything too seriously. Similarly to ours, we wanted to
represent our band the same way by having them laughing. I feel this worked
really well.
• The outcome of our Digi Pack was achievable by looking at other comparable
products, it was helpful during the process of which we needed ideas and to
see what the generic codes and conventions are of indie/rock music albums.
• The Kooks album cover is in black and white, similarly to many of their music
videos. Once we had completed our music video and it was in black and white
we thought that because of the research we had done on this album cover,
that we would also do the same thing and make the image black and white as
it is an obvious link to the band.
Our Album Cover

10. Music Video
• Overall I think the combination of our products has been successful. As we gathered information from our audience questionnaire it
enabled us to bare in mind what our audience want, so we made sure we included this in the music video as this is who would be
watching our video.
• 15. What instruments do you expect to see?
• This question was very important because as we had chosen the Indie genre, we need to know what our audience thought about the
instruments involved. As this pie chart has concluded, guitars and drums were the most popular choices for instruments which are seen
in the indie music video genre. And as you can see by our final product, this is what we have included in our music video.
• 17. Do you prefer the music video to follow a narrative/story or to be more non-linear?
• Although that our research showed that our audience would preferred to see a narrative performance we thought that we would spice
it up and create an edge to the music video by mixing narrative with performance. Thus challenging what the audience wanted to see
with what we thought would be best for the music video as this is what most indie/rock music videos included.

11. Most important questions
• Which is your preferred band/artist? • Why do you watch music videos?
People said they watch music videos for different reasons. They
said they watched them for entertainment, to see band members,
because they are bored, because they enjoy them and because
they are also interested to see what the lyrics are portrayed as.
•In reaction to this answer, we knew that our music video needed
to be entertaining and included a lot of visuals of band members. It
needed to be fun and portrayed in a good light. I think we have
done this successfully as there are clips in our music video where it
shows the band having fun and joking around.
• By asking this question, it helped us a lot as we could
look through the most popular artist work. In this case,
Kings of Leon, we were able to grab ideas from their
previous music videos and album covers so that when
we did our own music video and promotional products,
we knew that this is what the audience would be
looking for. Kings of Leon – Pyro: • What clothes/make up etc would you expect the artist to be
wearing in the indie genre?
There were various answers for this question, they included; dark
colours, chequered shirts, heavy eye make-up, skinny jeans ear
stretchers, nice stylish hair, casual but fashionable, band tees,
chinos, printed t-shirts, toms and leather jackets.
•This question was very important as we knew that the answer
• By looking through previous music videos, we knew would be stereotypical as most of our audience said the same
that we needed to include band performances in our thing. It is what the expect to see indie people wearing so this is
music video. what we dressed our band in.

12. Promotional package
• What is most likely to persuade you to buy an album? 25. What type of font would you expect to see on an indie
Why? album?
• There was various answers for this question which
include; album reviews, the front cover, the quality of
the songs, seeing the videos, likeable artist/band, the
price, track listing on the back to see if there are any
noticeable songs and originality.
• One of the answers from this question was very
helpful; ‘Album Reviews’, quite a few people answered
the question with this. So we thought that we must
include this in one of our products and decided to put it
on the poster as this is what would be enticing the
customer to buy the album.
• 24. What colours would you associate with an indie
album?
•By asking this question we were able to see that people
preferred/expected to see a simple font but it must be eye
catching. This helped my group come to a conclusion that this
would be our chosen font on our promotional products.
• As you can see, the majority of the audience said that
they would associate black and white with an indie •As you can see we have used the answers from the questionnaire
album. So we took on board this information and made in our products. Although it is simple and appealing to our
out album cover and poster black and white as this is audience, it is quirky and eye catching.
what the audience had preferred to see.

14. Music Video
• Since receiving the audience feedback it came clear to us what people enjoyed
and what they thought could be improved on. We were able to make
improvements on some of the things they said would help the video to look better.
• Also from the positive comments we felt pleased with what we had achieved. The
comments which said we stuck to the generic codes and conventions was great to
hear as this was our aim and we put a lot of thought into it making sure that it
would be successful.
• We gained comment s after uploading our video to YouTube
where people were free to leave comments and tell us what
they liked and disliked about the video.
• We also gained comments from talking to people about the
video so they could explain to us in full detail their thoughts o
the music video so it was easy to have a conversation and
discover more on how we could improve it.

15. Promotional package
• After we had planned our posters and Digipack we created a temporary design which
we allowed people to make comments on ask them for their opinion. It helped us to
gain a wider perspective about what different people liked and disliked allowing us to
connect to a wider audience.
• The improvement comments we received we thought about and we chose whether to
take on board of the comment or to leave it so we was making a decision on what we
thought the audience would want to see and what would catch their eye about it.
• As the poster was an advertisement for the CD we had to make sure that it stood out so
people would think ‘yeah I want to buy that’. In this stage we created three plans and
asked people to decide which one they preferred so we could make a final decision on
the final product. This was also what we did for the Digipack as proved successful when
we did it for the advertisement.