Indie Music Video Analysis By Hattie Ryan

What is Indie music?• Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the

1980s. Indie rock was extremely diverse. • In the mid-1980s, the term “indie” began to be used to describe the music produced

on punk and post-punk labels. A number of prominent indie rock record labels were founded during the 1980s. During the 1990s, Grunge bands broke into the mainstream, and the term “alternative” lost its original counter-cultural meaning.

• The term “indie-rock” became associated with the bands and genres that remained dedicated to their independent status. By the end of the 1990s indie rock developed a number of subgenres and related styles.

• In the 2000s, changes in the music industry and in music technology enabled a new wave of indie rock bands to achieve mainstream music.

• The term Indie rock, which comes from “independent”, describes the small and relatively low-budget labels on which it is released and the do-it-yourself attitude of the bands and artists involved.

• The influences and styles of the artists have been extremely diverse, including punk, psychedelic, post-punk and country.

Examples of Indie music artist’s

The Strokes

The Arctic Monkeys

Vampire Weekend

Florence and The Machine

Coldplay

The Kooks

Arcade Fire

Lana Del Ray

The XX

Florence and The MachineName: Florence WelchBorn: August 28th 1986, in Camberwell, London.

Florence Welch was raised in a family of writers and academics. She took to music at an early age and created her own band, which she named Florence and The Machine. The band met with success beginning in 2006. • Her first album ‘Lungs’ was released on the 3rd July, 2009.• Her second album ‘Ceremonials’, was released on the 28th

October, 2011.• Her most recent album is ‘How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful’,

which was released on the 29th May, 2015.

Florence and The Machine(style and marketing)

Lungs Album:‘Dog Days Are Over.’ (2009)

In Florence and The Machine’s music video, ‘Dog Days Are Over’, we can tell she is a very fun artist, this is shown through the bright colors that are used. She is marketed as being fun, artistic, creative and crazy. From her first album she is marketed as being lively and confident. The use of party banners suggest to the audience that she is up for a good time, this song is very upbeat so it fits in well. We would like to incorporate some of these elements into our music video. However, we would have to think very careful as this is for a lively video and ours is more relaxed and laid back.

Florence and The Machine (style and marketing)

Ceremonials Album:‘Shake It Out.’ (2011)

This song’s music video is different to the album ‘Lungs’, as it is a lot more professionally carried out. The outfits are changed a lot more creating different scenes. There is still a continuous theme of wildlife but the artist has explored creatively a lot more. There is a continuous color scheme throughout each music video, this time it is red and gold, which represents royalty. The artist has developed since her last album and this is very clearly shown through this music video.

Florence and The Machine(style and marketing)

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful album:‘Ship To Wreck.’ (2015)

This music video from this album is a lot more emotional and sad, we gather this from the message that is being portrayed. The music video is expressing her anger for a loved one.Over time we can see that the music videos are becoming more and more professional with different style of shots being incorporated. This video is very glum. However, the use of nature has been consistent throughout the albums and this features in most songs. This music video is different to the two previous albums as it isn’t as up beat and consists of a lot more sad emotions.

Incorporation In our music video we are going to incorporate some of Florence and The Machines elements from her videos and put it into ours as they are of a similar genre. The use of nature throughout her music videos is a touch we would like to add, as our song is an emotional song a good way to express this is through nature. We are also going to use a mixture of different clothing as style is very important to our artist. This is similar to Florence and The Machines videos and she has a range of different outfits but they are all of similar colors. They are also not obvious pieces of clothing that you could find in any shop, they are of a vintage style. This is what we want our artist to be dressed in as she’s an alternative artist and fashion is very important to her. We are also going to use a range of different locations and settings. As we can see from the music video ‘Dog Days Are Over’, there aren’t a lot of locations used throughout. We don’t want to do this as we want to create a range of different shots. Her music videos are both performance and storyline based, this captivates the audience. In our music video we want to create a performance but not a dramatic one with lots of people in it because it’s all about the artist and we don’t want the audience to loose focus. By making it storyline based this paints a picture to the audience. The genre of the song means that shots consisting of beautiful setting are relevant.

Lana Del ReyName: Elizabeth Woolridge GrantBorn: June 21st 1985, New York.

Lana Del Rey started songwriting at the age of 18 and signed her firstrecording contract with 5 Points Records in 2007. She is an American singer, songwriter and model. Her style of music is quite a sad, slow,and emotional theme. • Her studio album was named ‘Born to Die’, which was released in January, 2012. • She then released her next album called, ‘Paradise’, in November, 2012.• After that she released, ‘Ultraviolence’, in November, 2014.• Her latest album ‘Honeymoon’, was released in September, 2015.

Lana Del Rey(style and marketing)

Born to Die, album:‘Video Games.’ (2012)

Lana Del Rey’s music video for ‘Video Games’, is a very emotional song, consisting of lots of different short moving images. The emotions are represented by the blurred effect on the shots, this filter is a misty coating which suggests the artist is hiding her emotions. In the video an American flag is featured, this suggests the artist’s background and culture.

Lana Del Rey(style and marketing)

Paradise, album:‘Ride.’ (2012)

This song is an emotional song which tells a story of life so far. It consists of different shots which represents her life. In her song it says “don’t break me down”, this represents to the audience that Lana Del Rey has been through a tough time. In each shot it has a misty filter over the moving image, this reflects to the audience how she is feeling at the time. A lot of the shots used throughout her music videos are relevant to her life but they appear to be random, this is a good technique as it lets us dive deeper into her life.

Lana Del Rey(style and marketing)

Ultraviolence album:‘Shades of Cool.’ (2014)

In Lana Del Rey’s song ‘Shades of Cool’ a selection of moving images were put together to create a story. The images are overlapped this creates a good feeling for the audience as the transformation is smooth and the colours are very captivating. There is a colour scheme going on throughout the music video which consists of blue; the colour blue is usually a connotation of sadness and feeling down. This is expressed through her lyrics. We can tell she wants to tell the audience the experiences she has been through.

Lana Del Rey(style and marketing)

Honeymoon album:‘Honeymoon.’ (2015)

Lana Del Rey’s music video for ‘Honeymoon’, consist of a lot of cutaways, these help tell a story and mirror the emotion that Lana Del Rey is feeling at the time and throughout her life. All these shots have relevance to Lana Del Rey. A lot of close-up’s are also used, this creates a very passionate and emotional message, which the audience are able to address. Lana Del Rey is consistent throughout her music videos, so, if you saw a shot you would know it is from the very talented Lana Del Rey’s album.

IncorporationThere are aspects from Lana Del Rey’s albums that we are going to alter and use for our artists music video. As Lana Del Rey is a thirty year old female singer, songwriter, we believe she is a good example of our type of artist. The first aspect that is eye catching is her passion for her country, in her case it’s the United States, however we will change this and of course use the United Kingdom. This will be demonstrated by displaying iconic shots of famous buildings, sights, locations and even urban areas of London. We want to show our audience that our artist is British and display this through her performance. The second aspect that is eye catching is the idea of using cutaways throughout the music video. Through the use of cutaways we are able to gather a lot of information about Lana Del Rey, without her having to tell us anything. As our song is an emotional type of song which is slow and passionate using cutaways will be relevant to this genre of song. By using shots such as; sunsets, rain, close-ups of guitar strings etc. we are able to gather a lot about the artist as these things tend to represent emotions such as sadness and come across as being deep. However, sunsets connote a new beginning, representing to the audience that the artist is full of a mixture of emotions which we can see by the lyrics of the song. We want to use a mixture of performance and storyline based context in our music video. We don’t want to use too much of the performance based idea because in some cases this can come across as being a bit too much to take in and take the audience away from the message which is found within the lyrics of the song.

Billie Marten – Unaware

From the research I have done, looking into other Indie music artist’s and finding that the lyrics and visuals correspond, I believe that it would be a good idea if we did too.

• “Soft our your hands on the weight of the world”• “Pulling me in with a natural charm”• “It’s not air that you’re breathing”• “Mind is clouded and covered in smoke”• “What isn’t mine is starting to choke”• “You’re just a flag you’ll be flying too close”• “When you’re young and unaware”• “You broke, you broke all there was to be broken”• “I’ll be here watching over all you are”• “Stretching out, testing reaches like that like that endless open rail”