Codes and conventions of indie/folk

Every music video has some links to codes and conventions that relate back to that genre of music. For example, for a rock genre the ideology that you would expect to see would be, perhaps, a performance video of the band filmed at a gig. When creating my Music video I had to two main genres to look upon. One was the indie genre of music and the other is folk. From the music it is clear that the sound is much more based towards the folk genre. Although I still included aspects of indie conventions such as the use of an acoustic guitar that feature in my music video, digipak and magazine cover. Whilst looking at the folk aspects there were many conventions in which I could relate to. Here I have found key aspects from other artists that I have chosen to look upon and use within my music video.

This is a list of my personal favourite folk artists:

• Mumford and sons

• Show of hands

These screen shots were taken from the music video 'Country life’. The key convention that is portrayed throughout this video is the aspect of a black and white filter. This would be done to help portray the emotion of the characters and reflect their feelings, but at the same time it helps to connote ideology of depression and portrays a bleak setting. They constantly show shots of the band for advertisement and promotion purposes. This will allow the band to use it in their auxiliary texts. This is one key feature that is used with many bans. By allowing a passive audience to spectate the band, visualising them, the audience can then make the link through the digipaks and magazine covers in relation towards the music video

• Seth Lakeman

Looking at these three videos I have managed to find genre conventions that are shared and used by each one band/artist.

From looking at these videos I was able to get a range of different conventions that look upon both the indie genre but also the folk. By allowing myself to look into these videos I can now take these conventions and include some of these into my own music video. That way it would ensure that I have thought about the conventions and passive audiences are able to notice the similarities to other folk/indie music videos but at the same time using inventive and creative ideas to portray on screen only using these conventions as a bases.

These screen shots were taken from the music video ‘Lady of the Sea’. During this performance you look upon the convention of isolation. This is portrayed in the video with the singer ‘Seth’ in an abandoned warehouse. Having an isolated area keeps the focus upon the character but also connotes ideology of depression. Seth Lakeman’s video emphasises the fact that folk has its own genre codes and conventions that are specific and unique to this genre.

• Dark shadows

• Heaving lighting

• Exaggerated shadows

• Exaggerated music playing

• Close up shots of the artists

• Close up shots on Instruments

• Black and white

• Small areas

• Camera titling

• Variation of angles