Retrospective overview

From the beginning of the music video project me and my group have researched in a lot of detail the codes and conventions of the indie pop genre and identified what makes it different from other genres. For example I looked at various artists and bands that go by this genre and picked out certain things that are saw commonly used throughout their style, existing music videos and adverts. I found that the majority if not all music videos featured a heavy naturalistic feel throughout and this is most evident in artists such as Ben Howard, Mumford and Sons, Lana Del Rey and Noah and the Whale that i have done most of my research on. 

I also identified that there tends to be a narrative focusing on love throughout the music videos and songs of indie pop artists and this has helped build on ideas for mine and my groups music video. We chose our main location to be a beach as this fits in well with the naturalistic feel and tranquil style that is common for this genre and we have focused the narrative around Catherine’s female character and Ryan’s male characters past relationship. I found that a lot of music videos and album art of artists going by this genre that feature one significant object whether it be an instrument that is frequently used or a balloon which is what we have chosen to be the main symbol of our project. We thought it was a good idea to use this as it represents the idea of love with the red colour and it is something that the female character will be seen holding throughout the music video until the end when we releases it which will signify her moving on and letting go of her past relationship. This narrative that we have chosen fits in well with the song Lover’s Eyes by Mumford and Sons as it is a song about love. We also chose the female character’s clothing around the indie pop genre by dressing her in vintage style clothing as we found this was something that was common in people featured in indie pop music videos such as the artists themselves or the characters that the music video focuses on. We also decided to use the balloon throughout the digi-pak and the advert as research has also shown that there tends to be a theme throughout a lot of artists work and music and this will make our project fit in well with existing indie pop work.  

I think this year I have done a lot more planning and research into the genre we have chosen and this has enabled me and my group to be more organised and that has made our filming a whole lot easier. We have also considered other alternatives in case we have any problems with filming and this is something I did not think about last year. We also thought more about what we all want the music video to look like and this gave us a lot of interesting ideas to consider for the story board as well as the shots we plan on using. This made filming easier and gives us more variety of shots to chose from. We also hired out two cameras for our project this year rather than one and this made filming better as we were able to get loads of footage that included everyone’s ideas. This made the editing process easier and more interesting as there was various shots we didn’t look at as a group but that has been effective and something we plan on using in the final piece. I have also maintained my blog more than i did last year and hopefully this will help me get a better grade. Although when looking over my blog entries i feel i could be blogger more times a week about everything i have done during my media lessons so when it comes to submitting my work it gives other people reading my blog more of an insight to any problems we as a group may encounter and how we have overcome them. I am pleased with the outcome of our first set of filming and this has given us all more confidence with the second set which we will hopefully have done by next week.