The brief I
was given was to create a music video for a song of a specific genre of music.
A music video is a video which accompanies a song and has a connection with the
lyrics and visuals and is done to keep the audience interested. Furthermore a
music video is a way in which a song can be promoted, such as a very unique and
memorable video so people will remember and buy the song. A music video can be
made up of three main areas, narrative, performance and concept. These types of music areas can overlap and
often can be attributed to specific genres of music. For example a rock band
such as the Arctic Monkeys having mainly performance and concept based videos,
whilst a R&B artist such as Rihanna would be narrative based.
The song which
I chose was “It feels like we only go backwards” and is in the album Lonerism
and was performed by the band Tame Impala. The particular genre which the song
and artist belong to is the psychedelic rock genre, which is very diverse and
niche compared to more mainstream genres such as pop. The conventions of the
genre are the subjects of psychedelic drugs and having a good time, whilst
being individual and not following the crowd. This can be seen in my own video
with things such as the time lapses and kaleidoscope effects which I have used
in my own video, such as the time lapse in Liverpool Street station with the
main character being the focus. Furthermore another convention that I followed
was that I used bright florescent colours such as flashing yellow. This can be
seen after the character has taken the drugs and I use this to show the
audience what the character can see. This is very conventional as bright
colours such as yellow , blue and green are a way that the genre shows
individuality to the audience. Furthermore as psychedelic and mind altering
drugs are paramount to the genre it can be used to show this to the audience.
Another
convention which can be seen in my own music video is the use of very unique
camera angles such as our time lapse in Liverpool Street station. This is
conventional as it gives the audience the impression of how the artist is
feeling and that time has stopped, and it shows the audience a different way
that he can see the world, which is reflected by showing the audience the time
lapse. This can be seen as very conventional to the psychedelic rock genre as it
shows the uniqueness of the person and situation against the normality of the
rest of the people in the scene.
However I
did not want to follow the genre completely as it is possible that I would
alienate the audience watching because it was too extreme. With this in mind I used some unconventional
things, such as showing the artists face. Many of the psychedelic rock genre
videos do not show faces and they are often masked if they do, this adds to the
uniqueness as you do not know who the artist really is. Showing the artists
face in my own video will help the audience build a connection with the
character, yet is not used in that genre. This would help our target audience
of 15-30 year olds feel more comfortable with the video as it is not as extreme
and would comfort people more. Furthermore we have done this with dressing the
artist normally, in jeans and a plain black jacket, which is unconventional to
the genre. This would help with sales of
the album with people who were unfamiliar with the genre as it would not appear
too extreme and they would not be put off by the individuality of the video. A
further way in which my own video is unconventional to the genre of psychedelic
rock is that we have a clear narrative. For example with him breaking up from
his girlfriend and him going on to be depressed and leading to his eventual
suicide. Many conventional videos have no real narrative and are very unusual
with very unclear scenes and having no real link. This would increase our sales
as we have made it much more mainstream and open to a much wider audience. This
will increase the possible popularity of the band and will help grow the band
and sell more music and merchandise, making money for the record label in the
process.
Overall my
own video could be seen as somewhat conventional as we did not want to lose
fans of the genre who had listened to previous conventional music and who would
likely buy our album. However as we did
not want to put off people who do not know the genre, as this could be a
growing fan base and help the notoriety of the band, we made it less extreme
than some of the other conventional psychedelic rock videos . This is the best
balance as we have made a mainstream video which is very unique in the way that
it is shown to the audience, whilst still being influenced by the genre. This appeals to as big a target audience as
possible which makes financial sense as this gives it the biggest opportunity
of selling large numbers of albums.
My ancillary
texts are also somewhat conventional to the genre and a toned down version of
conventional psychedelic rock genre. My digipak consists of 6 pictures of
different things but uses things such as pictures of where the artist visits in
the video. These pictures are of places such as Liverpool street station and
have many effects which have been used to alter the picture. With the only
exception being the front cover which is a picture of a scenic cloud with tints
of purple and we can see the shape of a rhino in the cloud to relate to the
band name “the white rhino”. The album advert is the same as the digipak front
except we have the album name in a slightly different position and the words
“out now” on it. This is quite simplistic but gets all necessary information across.
This design shows how it is part of the psychedelic rock genre, but is not to
extreme that it would alienate people which would prevent people from buying
it.
