For our production of The Vaccines Post-break up sex we wanted to produce a video with the main narrative focused around the morning after a party, we also wanted to include a performance piece as this seemed a key convention for artists in the indie genre. We wanted our video to be as close as possible to professional music video, so when recording our performance piece we used the college’s recording studio this enabled us to use the JVC. HO with studio kit attached. These high tech cameras were perfect for recording the band footage. Along with using four of these cameras we also used a smaller handheld camera on a crane; having all of these cameras we were able to get lots of different footage of the band which gave our video a more realistic look.
We wanted our video to be simple so we used basic camera shots and did not include any fancy camera angles. The whole idea of a simple video came from research into to The Vaccines, who were quoted in an interview saying that Post-break up sex was one of their simplest songs and that is why the original video was simple and why we wanted ours simple. We also wanted our video to be completely indifferent to music videos in the indie genre so before production we researched into the indie genre by analysing other videos from the indie genre. We looked at L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N by Noah and the Whale and The Cave by Munford and sons; from these videos we found three key conventions of the indie genre:
• Performance piece
• A relaxed video without a lot of lighting and editing
• A lack of camera angles and movement
We wanted to include all of these things in our video however some of our footage looked too lit up and did not have the relaxed look we wanted, but we knew that we could solve this in the editing process where we used the Bad TV effect to give our footage a more faded and relaxed look. However our video does challenge the indie genre as we included a lot of editing such as cross cuts and fades. We did this to give the video a more professional look as without these effects the footage did not flow well making our video look it was made by armatures.
Using Goodwin's theory of the six major conventions of a music video we've been able to assess our own video to see if it follows these conventions. One of Goodwin’s conventions was that the lyrics and the visuals link, this can be seen in many music videos for example Eminem’s Stan (http://youtu.be/gOMhN-hfMtY). We decided that we would try to match our lyrics and visuals at certain parts of our video but not the whole way through, for example at 00:00:58 the lyrics were “All our friends were unaware; most had just passed out downstairs.” And the image shown was of someone passed out on the floor. Also when the lyric was “Maybe I misunderstood” the image is of someone with ‘misunderstood’ on their forehead. We feel that even though they are only simple links they are effective in our video.
Another on Goodwin’s conventions refers to the genre conventions of a video, as I mentioned above we looked into our genre and found three key conventions that we tried to stick to. This brings us to the third of Goodwin’s conventions: the representation of the artist. However our genre is about not conforming to typical conventions of music videos and not being seen as a ‘sell out’ however we decided to include a few close ups of the band and our main protagonist Sam so people knew he was the main protagonist and not for publicity. We also knew that our video may give the artist a negative representation as it focused on issues such as teenage drinking, drug taking and teenage sexual intercourse. This is not how we wanted our artist to be represented at first but then we realised this representation may be a positive as some of our themes can be seen as taboo and by showing them in our video it would allow our video not to be forgotten. This is something every artist wants for their music.
Goodwin also suggested that music videos must include the 'notion of looking'. However there aren't really any notions of looking in our video as things such as telescopes and screens with screens are not used. Also there is no voyeuristic treatment of the female body in our video even though there is shots of females in there underwear this is not voyeuristic as they are simply included to demonstrate what had happened the night before. Although there are some intertextual references to in our video, looking at our video you could also say there is some references to the teenage TV series Skins that was aired on Channel 4, due to the outrageous costumes, Alcohol and drugs and the 'Out of Control' modern teenager. Skins was one of our main influences as it is targeted at teenagers (the same as our video) and it also deals with many of the same themes of our video.
Goodwin's last theory on music videos is that each one demonstrates genre characteristics. This is something we found throughout our research; we learnt that most videos in the indie genre contain a performance piece for example Noah and the Whale’s Waiting for my chance to come (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1FZtiC5BRk). I mentioned above we feel we stuck to all the conventions of the indie genre and that we have demonstrated them well in our video.
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