Conventions of Indie Music Videos

 For this blog, I'm going to find some conventions of indie music videos, as inspiration for my video. These are also songs that I really like.

    The first video I'm gonna analyze is beabadoobee's Glue Song. Throughout the video, the color grading is very saturated and vibrant, with noticeable film grain, and all shots are handheld. The directors, Jake Erland and Bea herself used these to get a nostalgic mood, and to make the film appear more low fidelity (or li-fi) than it is. Low fidelity is an aspect of indie songs, and that is being emphasized here, even if the final song was also mimicking low fidelity. In the video, the artist is also the "protagonist", instead of an actor that represents the themes of Glue Song, which puts emphasis of her and builds her perception. There is a shot that has some slight blur and is overexposed which has a lover leave Bea. Combined, the viewer can imply that this is Bea's fantasy, and something she longs for. At the end of the video, there is a sequence of shots that end with the effect of a film reel being changed. This adds to the low fidelity theme, by increasing its appearance of being homemade. One of the last shots shows Bea and her lover. Only now, the shot doesn't have a dreamy effect, which shows how Bea has achieved her fantasy.

In post production, the editors changed the color grading to appear nostalgic.

    The next video I'm gonna analyze is Dayglow's Can I Call You Tonight? music video. Here, the director decided to embrace indie music video conventions by clearly using a green screen, and not trying to hide it. There is also a heavy noise effect and graphics appear to be dated. The video somewhat counts as a promotional video, as it has Dayglow and other musicians playing instruments. Sometimes, the musicians won't play what is happening in the music, but rather just act goofy. If this video was made in the 80s, when cameras became more accessible to the public, this video would have been seen as too amateur. However, because it was published in 2018, the director had to make the conscious decision to embrace "outdated" technology to fit conventions of indie music videos. The video can turn surreal, with one shot showing CGI people representing Dayglow and the person he talks about in his song, and another shot showing him with a psychedelic repeating effect, with a dancing CGI baby overlayed. This allows his brand of being "quirky" to be expressed to his target audience. At the end, the actors break character, which shows the target audience how "authentic" he is.

This shot definitely shows what is being embraced, with the overblown and oversaturated background, Dayglow holding an "antique" phone, and the text looking like it came from an 80s infomercial for kids. This allows it to appear nostalgic and play into indie tropes.