Comparison of Music Video

After completing our final music video, we have decided to compare it to another existing indie music video to analyse whether or not it was successful in being similar to the indie genre. I have chosen to compare our music video to Passenger's 'The Wrong Direction' as he is a similar indie artist to our intended artist representation.

The artist representation that Passenger depicts in this music video is very typical of the indie genre. The artist is playing the guitar throughout the narrative which conveys to the target audience that he has genuine talent; this is a favourable quality that the audience look for in an artist. Therefore the increases the appeal of the music video as the target audience can relate to the artist and therefore are more likely to maintain an interest in them and their

following songs. This attribute that contributes to the artist representation is also evident in our music video as we felt this convention was effective in creating a relationship between artist and audience. Furthermore the possibility that the audience can also play guitar/have an interest in it makes them feel more similar to the artist an therefore increasing the appeal of them. Conclusively to this point, the convention of a down to earth artist increased the appeal of our music video and therefore conforming to it also increased the success of the product.

The artist representation is constructed through the artist image. Indie artist typically have a style that the audience can relate to rather than the unattainable image that Pop artists often have.

This image is evident in the Passenger's video. The artist wears a simple shirt and jeans in which the audience interested in passenger could achieve themselves. This relates back to the qualities the audience favour by being able to feel similar to the artist and therefore influences them in maintaining an interest.

The image that our artist constructed conformed to the indie conventions as her outfits were different from the mainstream ideologies as well as being attainable by our target audience. her is an example of an outfit worn by the artist; a denim jacket, dress and tights. This would be found appealing by out target audience as they would be able to wear this themselves to feel like the artist.

Furthermore, both the music videos have similarities in terms of the visual. Goodwin's theory proposes that a relationship between the visuals and the lyrics increases the appeal of the music video as the audience can make more sense of the lyrics and therefore have increased chances of connecting to the narrative.

In Passenger's video, the lyrics state he is 'running in the wrong direction' with the visual being illustrative of this as he is running forwards when the background shows a car going the other way. This suggests to the audience to confusion of the artist in that his life may be going in the opposite direction to reality which provides them with a deeper understanding of the song in order to connect to it. This technique is also evident in our music video.

At this point in the music video, the lyrics hear, 'hangs about at the skate park, with his lighter...' and with the visual illustrating this directly, our music video conforms to the proposal of Goodwin's theory in the hope that the audience would understand the narrative more if shown it visually.

However, we also broke this convention.

By conforming to all the generic conventions, the product risks becoming too predictable and therefore uninteresting to the audience as they are too familiar with what they have seen. Therefore we chose to break convention to create a music video that seemed interesting without it not being classed as indie so that the audience weren't bored. For example,the lyrics in this frame hear, 'Another 5am call sitting worried in my hall...' however the couple are together and happy in the skate park. If we were to rely on the visual as an illustration of the lyrics throughout the whole video the audience will know what to expect and therefore the reason to watch the video becomes pointless. Therefore the argument that the artist sings of comes after this so that the audience are unaware of the following consequences.

Another difference in regards to the comparison of the two music videos is the use of special effects.

In Passenger's music video, he uses green screen to create special effects as a visual background to his performance. This is not conventional of the indie genre as the typical content in based on performance in this particular genre and therefore such choice is not reflective on the indie genre. In our own music video, we decided not to use special effects in the music video. This decision was influenced by the primary research we had conducted prior to filming where the majority of our target audience claimed they preferred a simple visual rather than one induced by special effects in the indie genre and therefore we decided not to include them. This would increase the appeal of our final product. Furthermore, special effects are typically found in dance/pop music video and therefore by including them we ran the risk to not conveying a clear genre.