analysis of music videos within the 'indie' genre

The first video i have chosen to analysise is Bloc Party's 'Helicopter'. The video is in black and white which gives it a more sinister theme. There is also use of special effects where clips of the band are animated. The video itself is also fastened up in parts which creates an abstract look which is something we would like to ceate within our video.

By watching the video, it is clear that it wasnt made with a huge budget. The band is filmed in an empty room focusing on them playing their instruments and performing their song. The video is put together mostly with mid and long shots of the band and close ups of them playing their instruments for example:

The bands image is seen to be very 'normal'. They are dressed in ordinary day to day clothes,, this tells us that the band if focusing on their music rather than their image.

The second Video i looked at was 'Always where i need to be' by the Kooks. This band is also within the 'indie' genre. Like Bloc Party's video, the main focus is the song rather than the video and the image they present. These videos are very similar in the way the video films the band performing their song. Although this video is not in balck and white, the colours are very bland. This makes sure the video doesnt draw too much attention to the video.

Our further ideas

Effects: Within our video, We want to use a neon light effect to keep a dance feel to our song. Although it is quite an aggressive song the rest of Bloc Party’s music is very much within the dance scene and we have to take aspects of this and incorporate it within our video. We want to make projections on to a black screen and use lighting to make the dancers featured within our video look unreal.

Here are some videos images we have found that have inspired us to use the neon light effect eithin our video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_9iXFeu5ZA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QORCf64DJjg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbcaONwD_4w&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jq42-HY8-g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jq42-HY8-g

Looking at these, we have decided that in the video, a dance routine will be featured. Within this dance, we want the dancers to be wearing a black jumpsuit with neon lights attached to it, just like the image of the jacket above. The dance will be performed in a blacked out area so the emphasis is on the neon lights and the blurred abstract look it will create.

We also some research in to videos that used similar effects to what we would like to do. Although this video has a massive budget and state of the art equipment, there are aspects of it that we would like to bring in to our video. We have a storyboard of the video which we will similarly base our storyboard around.

Projections: We had an idea to print some images on to acetate and project them on to the studio where we will be creating our video. Here are some photos we have taken for inspiration. We think this will intensify the spooky but aggressive image the song portrays.

location/set: Half of our video will be set in a blacked out studio as mentioned before with the dancers and the other half will be set in an abandoned building. One idea is to film in the abandoned mental insitiute in Hellingly. We feel this would be a perfect place to set the weird and spooky image we are trying to portray.

^ ^ ^

This is a mood board of Hellingly. This is just the sort of location that we are looking for.

We went to the industrial estate in Lewes to try and create some photos to use as back up projections if we couldn’t get to Hellingly. Although the images were not exactly what we wanted for our video, you can get an idea of the places we would like to shoot in. If for some reason we cannot go to Hellingly, we can use this as a plan B.

Costumes: As mentioned earlier, the dancers performing their routine will be wearing black jumpsuits with neon lights attched to them. We will have to make these ourselves however i think it will be worth it as i belive the effects it will look really good. The actor being played in the abandoned building will be wearing trousers but will be topless to enforce the actor’s masculinity, however our choices of trousers will be specific as we have now defined the target audience.

Narrative: The dance routine within the video is something we wanted to add in as wanted the video to have an abstract element. The actual narrative of the video is about a man being trapped in an abandoned building, sending himself crazy. We will enforce this by projecting weird and distorted images on to the set and using a variety of camera angles.

Mise en scene: Within the dance routine, we do not want any other props as we want the main focus to be on the dancers and the abstract look they will create with the lights on their costumes. Within the chase scene in the building, we want to use as many spooky props as possible. Anything that is already within that building we’d like to leave in as it would intensify the spooky image we are trying to create as most of the things left will be decaying.

Psychographics

We looked onto the Bloc Party Facebook to see how it was presented and what sort of people were followers by analysing their interests, values , attitudes and lifestyles. Below is a print screen of the fan page, consisting of 219,108 fans in total. This is alongside over 500 dedicated fan based WebPages about them.
Analysis of fans
Although we could not get access to many profiles most of the images were similar to each other with people either playing instruments or wearing band logo T – Shirts,, from this we can gather that the people who support bloc party like the instrumental aspects of the performance rather then just the appearance and attitudes of the band. This is also true of the stereotype of the ‘Indie’ culture which we previously made reference too.

Demographic of the ‘indie’ stereotype

•We looked at an typically ‘indie’ magazine and using http://www.nrs.co.uk/ we established who the majority of the ‘indie’ group are.
By analysing the magazine ‘Mojo’ we have established that the majority ‘indie’ culture is made up of – predominantly ABC1 people who are of a younger generation and who are according to the readers of Mojo, male (although this is not certain as Mojo is not the only ‘indie’ style magazine.)
However the following graph of Bloc Party’s chart positions for each of their albums suggest the audience is, although primarily an ‘indie’ one, also very mainstream with top 10 album entrees on numerous times and two albums with Gold and Platinum status.

Bloc Party's Demographics

After doing research in to Bloc Party’s public persona it was apparent that there is a specific image associated with the band that was a necessity to maintain. To understand the portrayal they already obtain we looked at different media appearances that band made and how they were presented in each, this includes interviews, magazine features and public appearances. The chart below is a representation of data produced through research ,found whilst trying to distinguish Bloc Party’s demographic.

Looking at these examples of publicity features we can analyse the demographic for Bloc Party. We have made reference to http://www.nrs.com/ to analyse the target audience and demographic of each magazine.

Based on an analysis of 12 months according to the data 296,000 men read NME on a weekly basis which is 1.2% of men reading magazines in total alongside 19,000 or 0.4 % of woman readers every week. 1.4 % of these readers are aged between 15 – 44 leaving the 0.2 % of 45 years + reading the rest. 137,000 of the downmarket audience read NME which is 0.6 % of C2DE readers compared to 250,000 or 0.9 % of ABC1 readers.

This music clip is from www.gaurdian.co.uk and is the remix of Bloc Party’s ‘Ares’: we looked into the breakdown of readership in to the Guardian newspaper – making similar assumptions of the online
newspaper version. 503,000 women or 2.0 of all newspaper readers, read The guardian on a regular basis, overtaken by 703,000 male readers or 2.9% everyday.615,000/ 2.5% of these people are aged between 15 and 44 and 590,00 / 2.4 % are over 45 years old. There are only 125,000 / 0.6 % of C2DE readers alongside a huge 1080,000 / 3.9 % of ABC1 readers

Brainstorming

location and set: For our music video, we have decided there will be two main sets. we have decided to shoot in a TV studio ( preferably all blacked out if we want to achieve the lighting that we want) and a big, broken down, abandoned building . In the TV studio, we are planning to have a dance routine with 4-5 dancers performing a dance routine that suits the song wearing neon lights to create an absract look.

This is just what my group and i are looking for to create, a scary tense atmosphere within the video, however without permission we might not be able to get inside as it is a dangerous building. As a 'plan B' we will shoot inside an empty warehouse and as an idea, we might see if we can use a projector, to flash scary and abstract images onto the walls when the actor/actress is running through the building.

costume and make up: The dancers will be all dressed in black to camoflauge themselves against the black loaction ( the TV studio) and will have UV paint and lights attached to them. we think this will create a really effect look with lights flying everywhere creating an abstract look.

Our group have decided that The person being filmed in hellingly will be wearing normal day to day clothes. We want our audience to concentrate on the music rather than the video as looking at other videos our chosen artist has created, the videos arnt glamorous, and the video's are more about the music rather than the video. All actors and actresses will not be wearing any make up as we think it would break the conventions of bloc party videos.

Props: our group will be using a very limited amount of props. we want to make the video as simple as possible as we dont want to make it too glamorous. The dancers will need UV lights so we will need to buy alot of them to make their outfits.

Staging: our dancers will be positioned in a particular way at the begining of the dance however mid routine, they will be all over the place so its hard to say specificly, where they are going to be positioned. In hellingly, we are not positioning our actor/actress. we will purely be chasing them around the building with a variety of shots.

Colour: In the dance routine, there will be a variety of colours within the dancer's costumes - created by the glow sticks however they will be wearing black clothes behind a black background to draw the attention to the abstract look the glow sticks will create. In the 'chase scene' the colours will be very limited as we want to film at night so this will be filmed in night vision mode so it will come out in a green tint.

Planning

The song that my and group and I have decided to make a music video for is 'Ares' by Bloc Party. The reasons for this is that our whole group ( Matt Mace, Hannah Brennan and Katie Meier) are followers of the band and this song didnt have a music video. This song has high energy and we all decided from the begining that we would like to film a video to an upbeat song where we could create an abstract look. The lyrics to this song are:


War war war war
I want to declare a war
My fist breaks your porcelain nose
There are other things that hands can do
To create or to destroy, mini gods and goddesses
First person singular
Set it set it set it off
War war war war
Keep the past the future is ours
Man made natural disaster
Blocking out all of the sun
Supermen and mitsi turbo
Speed agility super strength
Wipe the blood of those knuckles
Spark it give me two's on that

War war war war
I want to declare a war
True say blud that when we ride
We don't stop for nobody
The Africans and the Bengalis
He knows all the rude boys
Reebok Nike Adidas Puma"
Rer rer rer, this shit is long"
It's all getting, quite highly charged
Get out the way, or get fucked up
We dance to the sound of sirens
We dance to the sound


And to think, that these hands
Could work wonders, with their touch
Listening, to dead singers, in your room
In 98


We dance to the sound of sirens
We dance to the sound


The lyrics to this song are quite violent and agressive and the sound of the song is engergetic loud and unique. We started off with lots of interesting ideas to make our video as effective as possible.

Ideas so far . . . .

Listening to the sound of the song and looking carefully at the lyrics, we wanted to make a video that would match the mood and theme of the song. The song itself is quite aggressive and we want to show this within our video. As a group, we would like to create an abstract look in the video. we would like to film some sort of chase scene to create tension and suspence.