1b – Genre

I am going to discuss genre in relation to my advanced portfolio which was a music video to the Little Comet’s song ‘One Night In October’.

The type of narrative that the video falls into is performance when being applied to Andrew Goodwin’s theory. The video includes a closed, linear narrative as it is based solely on band performance. To make sure that our music video fitted in with similar ones in the same genre, we did a lot of background research on common indie conventions which we thought would be suitable for our video. These include quick, sharp shots, lip syncing, mimed playing of instruments, repetition of shots, long shots, mid shots, close ups and extreme close ups. The contrast of these shots is what keeps the audience captivated. These range from long and include a mix of angles including high angle, low angle, eye level and point of view shots. We also used tracking, panning and tilting so that the camera was not still throughout as it would make the shots very dull and boring. It was crucial to have this range of camera shots and angles to ensure it looks like other indie music videos as we took this common convention from videos we found inspiring. We did this by cropping each individual clip on the timeline to the correct time on our storyboard and also putting them in the correct order and making sure there were not two of the same clip or any similar ones.

Representation of our band members was also important because we wanted them to look like any other indie band so that our video looked as realistic as possible. We found that in most indie music videos, the videos are based solely on simple band performances and there is no clear story to follow. This brings more attention to the band which enhances their personalities so we just let our band member’s act and have fun which did this quite successfully. They made direct address to the camera, made eye contact and also interacted with each other which highlighted their playful acting, personalities and laid back attitudes. We wanted our band to look like a stereotypical indie band but we dressed them so that it was so obvious that it almost mocks the genre as we took it so far. We also used codes and conventions such as iconographies which are symbolic forms associated with our indie genre. We used common indie conventions to enhance this genre such as acting, set design, costume, lighting and space. We also tried to include ideologies to represent the indie themes and to keep this theme consistent throughout. We both thought that if we make the genre as clear as we could by addressing it directly to our target audience, the audience would gain enjoyment from spotting the common indie conventions that we had taken from other inspirational videos. This way our target audience would compare our video to other videos that fit into the same genre which is what we were hoping to achieve.  From the feedback that we gained after finishing the final video, we found that our target audience mostly enjoyed the humour and fun aspect because of the acting which complemented the genre of the song itself. The feedback also showed us that the audience liked the anticipation of waiting for the predictable features and getting involved in the video. Therefore our video successfully appealed to our target audience of individuals aged between 16 and 24.

Thomas Schatz claimed that there are just 2 genres. These are the genre of order and the genre of integration. I personally disagree with this statement as genres are constantly mutating and there is such a wide range developing all of the time with help from the developments of technology. Our video does just focus on one genre but it is still possible to mix more than one genre together such as electro-pop. There are no fixed genres. We picked the indie genre because it is so diverse and is a useful critical tool because it can be applied across a wide range of texts. The theorist Chandler once said “How we define a genre depends on our purposes.” The purpose of our music video was to appeal to our target audience as they are of a similar age to our band members and we wanted to portray them as role models for those interested in this particular genre. This way the audience could relate to them and find them inspiring whether it is due to their style or just their music. Our music video made it clear what genre the band fit into with help from the common indie conventions that we used and adapted so that it looked realistic.