Our video uses conventions of the indie rock genre, such as a focus on live performance over narrative. It follows characteristics of music videos in this genre by including close-ups of the lead singer. While some conventions remain unchanged for commercial reasons, genres still evolve slowly over time, as seen in the differences between videos even within the same genre. Our video incorporates conventions of both the rock genre and indie rock subgenre through its use of instruments like guitar and drums and themes of negative emotions.

1. G324 Evaluation Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Our video uses conventions which can be seen as repeated added features in the
video that crop up from time to time to signify the genre of the song as they have
established themselves in the genre we have chosen, for example we decided to
have a relatively large amount of performance in our video in contrast to
narrative which can be seen to fit with the indie rock genre more so than say the
pop genre. Every genre has its conventions, as it is basically what gives that
genre its identity. One easy theory you could look at when looking into genre and
its conventions is that of David Buckingham and the idea that recognising a
genre will not be as simple as looking for conventions as broad as colour
schemes or lighting however as we age we see that it is deeper than that with the
idea of other conventions leading the video into a subgenre as suggested by
another key media theorist, Barry Keith Grant who goes on to say that they can
be split into more accurate genres such as not just rock but indie rock or metal.
With the evolution of genre it is seen that the genre of our video would not be
seen to have what it is today 50 years ago.
Our video follows main characteristics of a music video that belongs in the indie
rock genre such as a lot of live performance and close ups of the main singer to
possibly portray the star image as put forth by Andrew Goodwin. We wanted to
give the audience someone to relate to when watching our video as it can be seen
in most narratives today when looking at music videos, which goes to show that
Andrew Goodwin’s theory was to a great degree correct. We also chose not to
illustrate the lyrics but to emphasise them by focusing the lyrics to family love,
instead of the typical narrative storyline of young love. We felt that it would not
be within our genre to simply illustrate them, also with the cuts to live
performance it would be difficult to jump from scene to scene of narrative and
make it make sense.
When looking at sub genres it looks as though they themselves also have
differentiating factors that could be seen as sub genres and it links back to the
point made by David Buckingham that the music industry is constantly in a state
of change and evolution where genre is concerned. However this evolution is
quite slow as videos today can be seen to be mass bought however look
relatively the same as the previous big hit and so there is no reason to change
much and therefore it is down to the artists to change genre and not the
companies that publish and have rights over the songs. This leads to the
evolution of the music genre being quite slow due to unchanging conventions as
the money machine is as strong as ever when creating relatively similar songs
more so in some genres than others however. When looking at our video you can
see all the classic instruments of rock used such as guitar, bass and drums
accompanied by a singer singing vocals about negative emotions which works
quite well when looking at how our video goes with the conventions of a video in
the rock genre and indie rock sub genre.

2. Different rock videos may be completely different yet fit into the same genre for
example our video showing sadness and a straight consecutive narrative is
completely contradictory to say, “Ain’t no rest for the wicked” by Cage the
Elephant that is constantly skipping backwards and forwards between what
happened in this narrative and is not so much about sadness however is about
someone describing events that have occurred to him and later show him
descending into madness, and it is the idea of sub genres that allow both of these
videos to be counted as rock when looking at the style and conventions they use.
Our product went against and also followed a theory put forth by Richard Dyer in
star image due the two sub genres that the song follows.
We followed Pam Cooks narrative theory in the sense that our video has a linear
perspective and follows a chronological path towards the ending, which has a
high degree of narrative closure. This is follows the standard Hollywood
narrative structure, which is commonly found in music videos across most
genres, including ours.
Our video used a high degree of cross cutting between narrative shots and
performance shots to keep the audience hooked as well as build up suspense. IT
also appeals to both audiences, ones who prefer narrative and those who prefer
the performance. Reference to questionnaire. A lot of bands in the same genre
use cross cutting, for example After Midnight by Blink 182, which switches
between the narrative of a couple in a psychiatric ward and the performance of
the band in an open warehouse.
Barry Keith Grant says that subgenres are a way that audiences can identify texts
within genres using key features. We feel that our video does this by following
similar conventions found in other music videos which our video drew
inspiration from. We drew inspiration of the first shot, where Lewis walks up to
the microphone and starts singing, from Foo Fighters’ video for Best of You, as
we felt this was a strong shot to use to focus on the lead singer and also sets a
high emphasis on the live performance. We also drew inspiration for
performance from Lower Than Atlantis’ video for Here We Go, using bright lights
and a dark room to enhance the contrast set between narrative and
performance.