This document summarizes how a student's music video project for an A2 media course both followed and challenged conventions of the indie music genre. The student researched conventions by analyzing other indie music videos. They found that indie videos often do not focus on presenting the artist as a star and may tell unrelated stories. The student developed conventions by not consistently showing the artist, and challenged conventions by using a fragmented narrative structure. Overall, the student aimed to make their video intriguing while still relating to the song's meaning.

1. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
- Discuss how your music video follows conventions. You could give examples
from real media texts and discuss how these then influenced yours.
- Discuss how you developed conventions. Were the conventions you used
then developed further or adapted?
- Discuss how you challenged typical conventions of music videos within your
chosen genre. Did you attempt to include other elements to make your
product stand out from the rest?
- Consider music video theory to support your judgements about your work.
Answer: Hi my name is Alex, and this is my evaluation for my A2 media
coursework. I have decided to show this in the style of a documentary to
demonstrate different forms of media. The evaluation is structured through 4
questions that will explain how I have kept in mind things such as my brand
identity and audience feedback to see how I have thought about conventions
within my chosen genre of Indie. Firstly, before I started to think about initial
ideas for my own personal music video, I decided to research other artists and
products associated with my own. This would act upon improving my own
products, as it would show that I had thought about similar products in the
industry and adapted these similarities to my own work.
First of all, I looked at interesting music videos in the Indie genre to find a certain
pattern amongst them, which would give me a better insight to the typical
conventions you would relate with this specific genre of music. I posted these
onto my blog in the research part of the portfolio so that I could refer back to
them when answering this particular question. One convention I found that was
common across this genre was that Indie music rarely presents a star image, it is
more obscure and thought provoking and doesn’t always relate to the lyrics of
the song. Indie music videos can often be portrayed as a random story with no
particular reference to the real meaning of the song. For example, one of the
videos I used as part of my research tasks, the 9 frame analysis, was Foster the
People’s music video to ‘call it what you want’ [VIDEO]. This was particularly
hard to analyse as it had no link with the lyrics and was open to interpretations
from the audience. The video did include its artists, yet many other actors
appeared in the video, so it was still very different to a typical pop music video
such as Rihanna’s ‘Disturbia’ [VIDEO], where Rihanna is presented as the star
image all the way through the video. This supports Andrew Goodwin’s theory of
star image, where the artist often appears in their own work to create a
recognizable role model, and this makes the audience more aware of the artist
and helps them gain popularity, from starring in several of their own music
videos to being placed as the main image of their merchandise and print
advertisments. The thing I found with the indie genre is that the public often
doesn’t know what the artists look like or knows many facts about them. They
are often made famous by another method, for example rising band Alt-J is
instantly recognizable by a triangle sign, which has been put on their album
cover An Awesome Wave as well as merchandise and other forms of media
relating to their music. I took these conventions on board and decided to
challenge them with the idea in mind that with the indie genre, it is not
important to consistently show my artist in their own video as not all indie

2. bands use this technique. It does happen with some indie artists, such as Bombay
Bicycle Club appearing in several of their own videos such as ‘Dust on the
Ground’ [VIDEO], and Friendly Fires often appearing in their own work such as
lead singer Ed Macfarlane in ‘Hawaiian Air’ [VIDEO]. However these are the
more popular artists within the genre who do this to promote their star image,
whereas the smaller bands such as Alt-J who use their music and unique
fragmented music videos to attract their audience. With my music video, I
attempted to develop this convention of solely using music to make my products
recognizable, as the girl and boy that appeared in my video were in fact actors
and not the artists of the song. [INTERVIEW WITH RAMSAY/GRACE]:
How did you feel about your character within the video?
Do you think the way I have used actors and actresses will be more
successful than just portraying the band?
When you first heard the lyrics to the song, what ideas went through your
head? Did you have similar interpretation as how the final video looks?
Can you relate to your character in the video in any ways?
This video could be interpreted as a real life situation. Have you ever been
in a similar situation as to the narrative of the video?
Do you think the audience could relate to this video as part of their own
personal experiences and life events? (personal identity - Dennis McQuail)
The idea of my video using actors is similar to the original official video to Love
Lost by The Temper Trap [VIDEO]. The director of the video, Dougal Wilson,
used the idea of schoolboys and girls doing a cross-country P.E lesson in the
video, which is irrelevant to the true meaning of the song. This is in a way also
challenging the conventions as this is a rising technique used by many artists in
the modern day; they want to become famous using their music rather than by
starring in their own videos. By using their music as a way of gaining fans, this
will make people want to find out more about them online, as at the end of the
day, an artist is meant to be famous because of their music, not anything else,
although some artists in the pop genre are also famous for other things such as
Lady Gaga’s striking fashion numbers [IMAGES].
Another convention I believe I followed yet adapted was the idea that my video
followed a relevant narrative that matched the lyrics to the song. In some indie
music videos, a typical convention we may see is of the band performing their
song, whether in a typical indie location such as a field or on stage at a gig, such
as Bombay Bicycle Club’s video to Shuffle which shows their journey together as
a band playing live and authentic home footage [VIDEO]. But in others they
sometimes tell their song as a story, like in the Arctic Monkey’s video ‘Leave
Before the Lights Come On’ [VIDEO]. I decided to go down the route of showing
my video in the form of a narrative rather than of the actual band as I thought
this would make the Temper Trap appear more intriguing to the audience and

3. would also challenge the future of indie music videos, as more and more bands
are moving away from the ‘performance’ style videos and focusing more on the
narrative style ones.
When researching my genre I noticed that few followed a fragmented narrative
structure. This may be because the video would be too difficult to follow,
however I liked the idea of using this technique, as by challenging this idea, it
would make my video memorable. For example, Alt-J’s video for Breezeblocks
[VIDEO] struck me the moment I watched it because it’s so different. There are
very few videos made in reverse and although this makes the video confusing, it
made me think about its concept for a long time after and will become
recognizable to the audience as ‘that video played in reverse’. This is partly why I
decided to make my video fragmented at times, such as mixing up the past with
the present. I wanted it to be more interesting, rather than a video with a easy to
understand narrative in a chronological order. The past is revealed more nearer
the end of my video and I feel as if this would keep my audience entertained, and
make them want to look out for future videos by this band. This is similar with
my love for Alt-J as each time they bring out a new video it is completely
different from the last, and this will continue to grab the audience’s attention and
make their music more popular to the world.
STUART HALL/OTHER THEORISTS: form of personal identity.