Sunday, 12 October 2014

Conventions of an indie pop music video

To gain a better understanding of the typical conventions of an indie pop music video, I looked at Marina and the Diamond’s ‘I am not a robot’. It was first released on to YouTube in 2009 and has over 4 million views.  

Camerawork


This music video is very different to a normal music video and does not follow the typical convention of a music video with camera shots- there isn’t a large variety of different camera angels and shots. There is no camera movement and is only thing of focus on every shot. The video only uses three different type of camera angles;

Mid Shots- this is used to help make the music video seem more real, as it is common for these shots to evolve the main artist singing the song. The music video centres around this camera angle, as it allows the audience to just focus on Marina and what she is singing.

Close-ups- this type of shot is mainly used to show the emotion of the ain artist in the band. These shot help the audience get a feel for a song/narrative. These shots are used when a certain lyric is really important means something to Marina and therefore she shows more emotion.

Extreme Close-ups- These types of shots usually show something in extreme detail so the audience cannot fully understand what is happening in the shot, they only get a glimpse of it. In ‘I am Not a Robot’ there several extreme close up of Marinas face- this keeps the audience interested as they don’t see the full shot of thins until towards the end of the video. 

Editing




In a music video this music video the only editing technique used is a straight-cut. This is done simply because there is no need for anything else. The main focus for this video is the lyrics of the song and the meaning, so technically the video is very straight forward as it helps keep the audience focused.  In ‘I am not a Robot’ the pace of the editing is done to suit the structure of the song.  At the beginning of the song, the editing is extremely slow and the shots are long (the first three images are the first three shots of the video). Then when the chorus plays the editing starts to speed up as the song goes on the editing get more fast pace and continues to get faster as the song goes on (the next three shot are example of how many different shots are show in a very small space of time).  This is done because it helps keep the audience interested in the video till the very end. Some shots are only shown very briefly, so the audience want to keep watching to see the shots in more detail. Also in connects the editing to the song, as the editing is slow like the song is at the beginning and faster like the song towards the end.


Lighting


In ‘I am not a robot’ the lighting is mainly very natural and bright, so the audience can clearly see marina and all the different body art on her. However there are also shorter shots that only have lighting coming from behind Marina’s head. This has been done to make the video stand out and be different (which fits perfectly with the indie pop genre), as it not normal to have bad lighting within a music video. Also this has been done, like the extreme close up, to give audience hints of the different shots in the video as the audience want to see the shot in full, so therefore keep watching the video till the very end.

 

Mise-en-scene


In ‘I am not a robot’ the lighting is mainly very natural and bright, so the audience can clearly see marina and all the different body art on her. However there are also shorter shots that only have lighting coming from behind Marina’s head. This has been done to make the video stand out and be different (which fits perfectly with the indie pop genre), as it not normal to have bad lighting within a music video. Also this has been done, like the extreme close up, to give audience hints of the different shots in the video as the audience want to see the shot in full, so therefore keep watching the video till the very end.
 
Performance


This music video has no narrative and purely performance. The music video features Marina in five scenes: one with her covered in black oil and glitter, one made-up in black, green and pink body paint, one with just her as her normal self, one with diamond lips and eyelids and lastly one with the green, pink, and black body paint smeared. This has been done to keep the audience engaged throughout the video. As at the beginning of the video the audience see Marian in the black oil and glitter, only as the song gets faster do the audience slowly get introduced to the other scene. At first only a glimpse are shown of them with quick cuts, extreme close-ups and bad lighting not fully revealing what is happening in the scene- so the audience can’t properly tell what is happening. This makes them keep watching till the very end so they can see each scene in full. Also by having a very simple music video concept allows the audience to focuses on the meaning of the song and not get to distracted by the looks of it, which indie pop does a lot.  

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