Our music video for the song "Three Tree Town" by the indie artist James Lorell both follows and challenges conventions of the indie genre. We followed conventions by using close-up shots of the artist singing and playing guitar, simple editing with fade transitions, and incorporating the guitar as a focal point. However, we also challenged conventions by having equal focus on performance and narrative scenes, including more context about the artist's personal life through the narrative, and having more elaborate mise-en-scene and long shots during the narrative portions of the video. Overall, we aimed to be largely consistent with expectations of the indie genre while also making our video more interesting through some unconventional elements.

1. In what ways does your product
use, develop or challenger forms
and conventions of real media
products.

2. We named our artist James Lorell and he sang ‘Three Tree
Town’, this song and its artist where typical of the indie genre, in his
products we looked at they were very focused on the music as
oppose to him and there was nothing over the top and colourful
and his music video mainly about the singing and performance as
oppose to the narrative as well.
In our video we decided to have both performance and narrative
equally, our performance shots are close up shots of our actor
playing guitar and singing with just one main light positioned
slightly to one side, the shots are very basic with little to no miseen-scene which is what would be expected of the indie genre.
Our narrative tells the story of our actor returning home to find his
girlfriend in bed with somebody else, they argue as he leaves the
house and gets back into his car and drives to a park. At this point in
the video he is walking around the park to reminisce and
remembers their relationship.

3. In terms of camerawork I think that we did not break conventions, typical an
indie music video would be close up intimate shots, nothing too complex or
obscure, shots that focus on the artist. We have followed the convention in
terms of the close up shots of the artist during the performance this was to
create intimacy and connection between the audience and the performer and
bring focus on to him which was accentuated by the no mise-en-scene.
However by also have long shots during the narrative challenged the typical
conventions of the indie genre because at times we also had a lot of mise-enscene with the trees and the park in the background. These long shots did
have a purpose as like the close up shots connotes withdrawal the long shots
connote his withdrawal and distance from people after what has just
happened. The pictures we took of our artist that were used in both the digipak and web-page also have very little mise-en-scene and are mid-close up
shots.
Another convention we followed in the camerawork for our digi-pak and
webpage is that we incorporated the guitar, because the music is such as big
focus in indie gene musical instruments are usually visible and because our
song was also very guitar based we thought that it would be better to have it
in some shots.

4. The sound in our music video very much followed the
convention of the Indie genre; in the music video ‘Hall of
fame’ by The Script (which is a convention of the indie
genre) the pinnacle of the storyline matches that of the
song and its tempo. Our song is a very slow song but like
he hall of fame video we have synced parts of the
narrative to fit with parts of the song. Another
convention of indie genre is the music instruments they
play, there is often an acoustic part to the
song, instruments such as guitars and pianos, we have
utilised this and have photos that’s focus on him playing
the guitar and pictures on the digi-pak and on the
webpage have the guitar in them.

5. In terms of editing we followed the conventions of the indie genre, the
transition we used was ‘fade’, this was very simple, nothing
extravagant and we used few other effects, we used slow motion in
parts to add emphasis to that event but other then that we kept it
simple as this is what would be expected by the indie genre. However
we have broken the convention of the genre in the way we have
represented our character, In Ben Howards other videos he is
portrayed as lower class, being in smaller genre he will not make as
much money as those in the pop genre. In our video our character has
a car and a house and he quite young, which would suggest he has a
fair amount of money. Our character also conforms to the type of
clothes an indie artist would, the colours are dark with no big labels or
lots of jewellery. This similar to what Ben Howard wears on his videos
because it concentrates the focus onto the music and the song as
oppose being all about the artist.

6. Another way we challenged the conventions of the indie genre is the
way we had just as much if not more narrative then performance.
Because the genre is usually so focused on the music in many ways,
narrative usually takes a back seat, sometimes there isn’t even
narrative. WE decided to have an equal amount because we think that
it makes the video more interesting and will mean the audience watch
it more. By having more narrative also separates our video from other
indie videos and could possibly attract people form other genres
expanding the fan base.
In conclusion we can see that the majority of conventions we have
followed only slightly changing them to either portray what the
character is feeling or to fit in with our planned narrative. WE found it
important to stick to the majority of the conventions of the genre as
we wanted to appeal to the target audience from but it think by
challenging some of the conventions we have made our video different
and interesting which will separate it from other indie videos.