Genre Conventions

The song I am making a music video for is ‘Uprising’ by the band Muse. This song is a part of the Alternative Rock genre but can also be classed as Indie rock because these genres are quite similar as they are both sub genres of a wider rock genre.

As my chosen song falls into the Alternative Rock genre one of the main conventions of this would be that my music has to have a mix of narrative and many performance shots of the band with their instruments but mainly focusing on the performance of the music video as seen in ‘Lover Boy’ by You Me At Six, a popular Alternative Rock band. We then have the music video ‘Misery Business’ by another popular Alternative Rock band called Paramore which has slight narrative and is a performance video. In the performance clips we see in most Alternative Rock videos we see performance clips of the whole band which is shown in a wide shot but the lead singer is always the centre of the focus and always on the screen this would usually be a close up. A shot what seems to be used a lot at the moment within the genre is a shot of the lead singer but been able to see the other members in the background performing as seen in ‘Weightless’ by the band All Time Low and many other modern music videos, it is used as an attempt to stop everything been just about the lead singer.

Conventional colours and lighting used in videos depend on how upbeat the song it. A song which is more upbeat tends to have a brighter colour scheme for example the music video for the song ‘Brianstorm’ by the Arctic Monkeys a well-known Indie rock band, the song is very upbeat and we see shots of dancers with bright coloured flashing lights. When a song isn’t very upbeat and is quite slow it tends to used dark colours, they are usually very dull and sometimes are even shot in black and white for example ‘A-team’ by new comer ED Sheeran. Also the amount of cuts used in the music video will depend on how upbeat the song is used for the music video. If the song is slow there will be less cuts as the shots will be slow/gentle and will join together nicely whereas is the song for the music video is upbeat the shots will be a lot quicker and sharper. The setting within the Alternative Rock genre is conventionally dark; most settings used in music videos of this genre reflect the lead singer’s background, it also creates a certain type of mystery to the music video which is a convention of Rock & Roll. The genre rock is stereotypically known to have middle/lower class audience and this can sometimes be represented in the music videos produced for example ‘Sun Goes Down’ by the Arctic Monkeys. The band in the video also has to represent their audience by what they wear. So the band would usually wear something that goes with the mood of the song which goes back to talking about the speed. The speed of the song gives an understanding on the mood the song is, so most things have to be based on the mood.

The look given to the band is highly important. However the main focus is on the image the lead singer sets as the audience will decide if they like them depending on how they present themselves it is sometimes said to be more important than the song. If the audience like the music and the look the singer represents the audience will project themselves onto them and will imagine being in their shoes and the life style they have. This is why it is important for the lead singer to establish themselves in their music videos and this is much easier done in a narrative or performance video rather than a conceptual one, however some bands do go out of their way to not stick to the typical conventions for example ‘All the small things’ by the band Blink 182 where they present themselves as a boy band. They fit into the pop punk genre which is nothing like the Alternative/Indie Rock genre so we would never see an Alternative Rock band doing anything like that.

These conventions are used in Alternative/Indie Rock videos as opposed to an R&B video which would involve lots of bling and half naked girls dancing around and artist which is performing and usually involves having lots of money and not having a care. The difference between the conventions with these genres is the setting. A hip hop video would usually be set in a big bright mansion, showing off lots of luxuries whereas an Alternative/Indie rock video would be set somewhere dark and somewhere quite plain.