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.

Correspondence with the Band

This was our initial correspondence with the band, right after I had emailed them to see if they were interested in us making them a video. 

Band Update

When Rob met up with Toby last Monday (30th October) Toby mentioned that they were currently rehearsing in a studio in Leeds called Pirate Studios and invited us to film them there. We thought this was a fab idea as it allowed us to get some footage of them 'performing live' to fit with the genre conventions. Therefore we messaged the band to ask them if we'd be able to meet them there this Monday:

However, Toby replied saying that Monday was not a good day for them, suggesting instead that we go the following Thursday. We have agreed to this so tomorrow me and Ed are going into Leeds to film them at Pirate Studios. We are taking 3 three cameras, one which we will just set up as an master shot and two which we will use to get more close-up and different angled shots. We will do the initial run through with the 3 cameras on tripods to get three steady, solid angles which we can then refer back to throughout the video. Then we will turn off the master shot and just use the two other cameras to get some more interesting music videos such as the low, side angles we've seen in other performance based videos such as Maroon 5's 'Harder to Breathe'. Hopefully we will then be able to get a variety of interesting shot types and angles as well as 3 steady core shots which we can use to create our 'music video within the music video'. 

We have been thinking about going into Leeds to just get some preliminary shots and establishing shots we can use for the introduction of our video. When we found out we would be in Leeds filming at the studio on Thursday, we realised it coincided with the Christmas lights switch on which we had wanted to go to to get some 'happy' footage which we can contrast with our 'sad' stuff surrounding the homeless person. Therefore me and Ed are going to stay in Leeds to capture the light switch on which we may even use when we start to introduce colour. We also had a look to see what else was going on and saw that there is a 2 hour concert on before the lights are actually turned on so we thought we could film some of this as well, perhaps of the stage or maybe just of the crowd to try and capture the atmosphere. 

So hopefully, after Thursday, we should have our first footage for the narrative side of the video and all the footage of the performance aspects. 

Similar Music Videos - Alt J: In Cold Blood

Alt-J - In Cold Blood

A self aware sense of humour I’ve seen before in Kasabian’s music videos is highly prevalent in this concept/narrative video. The video appears to parody a David Attenborough-type nature documentary, in this case about a mouse. Theres a black comedy twist to this trope however as while in the first half of the music video the nature documentary is authentic looking (complete with a voiceover) and has a forest setting the second half shows the mouse wandering into the aftermath of a crime deal that has gone wrong complete with bodies and violent imagery. The video revels in some bleak and grisly mise-en-scene that sharply contrasts the natural beauty and peacefulness that sums up the beginning of the video and can be expected of nature documentaries. The subverting of expectations creates a somewhat funny but also unnerving effect with the video and befits indie rock videos which have a penchant for creative/unique concepts and self-awareness.

Similar Music Video research - Elbow: Grounds for Divorce

Elbow: Grounds for Divorce

This is an interesting video which first appears to be a relatively simple performance style but is edited in a very subtle but clever way. Every time the music repeats they use the same sequence of shots to accentuate this recurring melody. This idea of repeating and rewinding certain shots runs through the whole video and is used particularly well in shots where its effects are exaggerated e.g. when they start the snooker game. This is actually a similar concept to our video.

The general video sticks within the genre conventions as it is made up of a 'live performance' and, although it definitely focusses more on the lead singer, there are shots acknowledging each of the musicians and backing singers in turn. This is something which we can take note of when filming the performance aspects of our video, to get the balance of screen time for each of the band members right in accordance to genre conventions.

The general colouring of this video is muted with very few bright colours or 'stand out' props or costumes. This is not something we can take inspiration from because our band have said they like bright colours and often use them in their promotional techniques. Therefore this is something we need to include in our video despite it not fully conforming to genre conventions.

They also have elements of choreography within it with the girl dancing in the bar. This adds a layer of interest to what would otherwise be a purely performance based video. We don't need something like this in our video as it will be interwoven with a narrative which is actually the main focus of the video, therefore giving it layers of meaning beyond what this particular Elbow video has.

Interestingly, here, the concept lies in the editing rather than in the actual camera work or mise en scene. All it's individuality was added after the video was shot through the use of the repeated and recurring sections of footage that go in time with the music. It's a clever idea and one that makes the video memorable so it stands out amongst all the other indie rock performance based videos.

Meeting with Tranqua Lite

On Monday 30th October Rob met with Tranqua Lite band member Toby who we've been communicating with about the video. Rob went with a list of questions (written in my concepts blogpost) and also just to pitch our ideas to get their opinions and own ideas too. This is the feedback we got:

• They really liked our ideas, especially the Biffy Clyro inspired one with two storylines. They liked how this wasn't a stereotypical video and thought it would help them stand out. Therefore we have decided to go with this idea as the main body of our video. 
• They hadn't written the song with any particular person in mind but were inspired by their surroundings and the level of homelessness in Leeds, therefore they liked the idea of having an interview with an ex-homeless person at the start of the video. Therefore this is also something we're going to pursue and film to, again, make the video stand out from others of it's kind and also give it a bigger impact on it's audience. 
• They want to give the audience a view of their environment, all their ideas are based on their home town so they really liked the idea of filming it in Leeds. 
• The only slight problem we came across was that they like bright colours and their album cover is made up of them. Therefore they might be averse to our idea of presenting it in black and white. However, Toby said it might work as long as the colours are definitely seeped in at the end, even perhaps bringing in individual colours the band use to promote themselves such as blue and red. This is something we will have to discuss further with the band when we meet again. 
• They are rehearsing for the release of another single later this month and are using a recording studio in Leeds to do so. Toby invited us to the studio to film them performing the song which we could use as our music video within a music video. Although we originally though of doing a set up like the '4 5 seconds' video, this might be better as it's more in keeping with the genre conventions and is an amazing opportunity to use a professional set up in the video. We are going to see if we can meet them there on Monday to film the performance aspects of the video which is very exciting! 

Analysis of Music Video Results

To get a better view of our target audience we created a questionnaire which we posted on Facebook to reach a wider, varied audience (not just media students) to get a more representative view of how our genre sits in different age groups and see if it matches with our YouGov audience research. Overall, we got 47 responses. They support our initial audience research which is very reassuring and backs up our initial thoughts on target audience. 

Out of 21 indie rock artists the following age groups had heard an average of:

- 16-25: 51.7%

- 41-50: 54.5%

- 51+: 37.7%

The same question comparing the genders of those surveyed is as follows

Males had heard of an average of 42.9% of the artists

Females had heard of an average of 51.3% of the artists

46.15% of males surveyed listed indie rock as a genre they enjoy regularly listening to.

52.94% of females surveyed listed indie rock as a genre they enjoy regularly listening to.

As our results clearly show, the previous audience research matches almost exactly with there being a relatively even split between girls and boys in their interest in indie rock. We can also see our younger (16-25) and older (41-50) generations recognising more of the indie rock bands, reflecting how they're more familiar with the genre and suggesting a larger fan base in these age categories which we also found in our previous research. We believe this to be because the indie rock genre lost it's popularity in the 2000s and has recently gained a much larger following meaning it's fanbase is generally more mature adults and young teenagers. Our questionnaire results show similar patterns which reinforces this idea. However, as the band is young (teenagers) our primary target audience will be young fans as people tend to follow artists similar to their age group. We can see this reflected in our audience research as more modern bands such as 'Catfish and the Bottlemen' were much more recognised amongst the younger age group than the older one. Similarly older groups, such as 'Pulp' were less well known in the younger group (only around 37% said they had heard of them) whereas this was much higher in the older age group (100% recognition). As our band is new and young, it can be expected that our primary target audience will definitely be in the 16-25 age category. 

The 51+ generation knew less of the bands showing that they are less interested in this music scene but are still interested in this genre, therefore this age group is our secondary target audience. 

For one of our questions we asked what aspects of music videos the audience found appealing. 

Our music video will be composed of narrative and performance elements so these results were very encouraging. We can see that, for our primary target audience, narrative is the most popular choice which fits in with the main body of the video. Interestingly, they were also positive about the depiction of social issues, an option selected by 40% of our audience. This is really good as the band wanted the video to centre around homelessness which I had concerns about not appealing to a younger audience. However, they responded very positively to this option in the questionnaire, especially compared to the 40-51 age group where only 10% chose it. This makes me feel very positive about our target audience's reaction to the video.

Similarly, in another question we gave our audience screenshots from different genres of music video and asked them to pick one which appealed to them. B and E represent our ideas.  

17/39 people of our identified target audience picked B and E. 

This, again, is very encouraging as it suggests that our intended look and style of our video appeals to our primary target audience. 

This question asked audiences to pick the music genres which they regularly listened to. 

As we can see, in our primary target audience, indie rock is the second most popular genre of music behind pop with over 60% of our audience choosing it. It was also the third most popular choice for the 41-50 age category with over 50% of them selecting it, again supporting the pattern of older and younger generations liking the genre. This just further solidifies that our target audience is correct and will be likely to watch the video. 

This question asked audiences to select which lighting style they preferred in music videos. 

These results were admittedly unexpected. We did not think that sunset lighting would be so popular nor did we really understand why. Apart from this interesting result, everything else seemed pretty evenly spread which is positive as our black and white idea was relatively well received by our target audience but I definitely think we should add colour in at the end as bright colours scored marginally higher in the questionnaire with around 36% of people choosing that and 33% picking black and white. 

Overall, our results were very positive in relation to our previous research and music video ideas. We feel confident that we will successfully appeal to our desired target audience effectively as well as presented the issue as we had desired which is a very positive outcome.