Similar Music Videos - Maroon 5: Harder to Breathe

Maroon 5: Harder to Breathe 

We now need to investigate the indie rock genre to make sure our video uses conventions for the genre. For this I’m going to analyse the Maroon 5 video for “Harder to Breathe”. To begin with the whole video uses dark colours and a lot of shadows for the mise-en-scene. This is a genre convention for the indie rock genre as a lot of the songs use a dark narrative and the visuals link to the music. A theory stated originally by Andrew Goodwin. The pace of the editing is very fast pace as this links to the pace of the drum beat in the background of the song. Most indie rock songs contain a beat like this therefore a pace editing pace is a classic genre convention for indie rock. However, this video also breaks genre conventions. For example, most indie songs are written to portray a deep and meaningful story. But this video contains no narrative and concentrates on the star image of the band. Although star image is a motif of Maroon 5. During the performance in this video a master shot is used as well as secondary shots. the master shot is stationary and views the whole band. The seoncdary shots are hand held and form close up shots on the performers and their instruments. Electric guitars and drums are classic images of indie rock therefore it is a genre convention to show these instruments in the video.