Representation in Indie Pop Music Videos

Since Indie as an umbrella genre provides artists with full creative liberty we see that Indie Pop music videos represent people from all walks of life. It is not limited to any one social group and will often represent multiple social groups in the same video. A good example of this is George Ezra's 'Budapest' music video.

Age Group

If there is one social group that Indie Pop represents more than others, it's young adults since the majority of the artists in this genre belong to that age group. Artists who emerge in the Indie Pop scene, usually do so when they're rather young so even if they make music for a long time it still falls withing that age group.

This isn't to say that adults do not partake in the making of Indie Pop music videos or that children are not represented.

Gender

Indie pop is inclusive of all genders and is one of the genres where equal participation of males and females can be observed. Gender bending is not uncommon.

The music video for 'Still Feel' by half.alive features all boys.

BORNS leads the gender bending movement with Indie Pop music videos such as 'I Don't Want You Back' where he embraces androgynous image with more enthusiasm when it comes to appearance (inspired by Madonna) and vocals alike.

Race

Artists of different ethnicity and races congregate together under Indie Pop since there is no all-ruling company which filters the artists or even the extras alike by color or race to appease a white audience.

No Rome is a London based Filipino who has recently been making waves especially with his latest music video, 'Narcissist' for which he paired up with the established Indie Pop artist, 1975.

Parkeh and Singh is an Indian Indie Pop duo.

Sexuality

The LGBTQ+ community has been historically richly involved with the music industry. It's no different for the Indie Pop scene. Many queer artists dominate the scene, offering representation for the LGBTQ+ community since they're given the freedom to express themselves and their identities.

LP's music videos play a big role in the representation of wlw.

Shura's music video for 'Touch' offers a healthy representation of same sex couples and aims to normalise them.

Comments

Second Cut (Final Music Video)

Once the first cut was done all the footage was laid out in the required order, the second cut was for adding all the effects and animations to make the video more visually pleasing. While shooting we relied on the sunlight as our main source of lighting and since the shoot took place over three shooting days with varying levels of light on certain scenes, this lead to some unpleasing discoloration to certain sections of the footage where the camera picked up odd muddy tones instead of the vibrant primary colours. In this first half of colour correction Mahnoor basically tried to match all the footage to a equal level of brightness and correct all the discoloration and try to match them on intensity and saturation of colour as well. In the image above you can see her correcting the dull greenish hues on the original video to a the required soft vibrant yellow. She wanted to match all the colours so when she would further apply filters there would be no miss match. After basi...

Creative Critical Reflection

Now that we've wrapped up our advanced portfolio its time to reflect on our project through the focus of certain questions. Q.1 How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do the represent social groups or issues? The genre me and my team picked for our final products was indie pop. Indie as a genre in general breaks tonnes of conventions and creates new ones mostly due to the freedom allotted to the artists. Rather than having set conventions the indie scene works in trends which emerge with time, which is what we've based certain aspects of our products off and what we've gone against to showcase some of our own artistic ability. In a country like Pakistan, which is mostly over run with remastered coke studio versions of old songs, releasing an indie pop album and music video is unconventional as it is. Similarly, due to the creative freedom the genre allows us, we were able to represent social issues which we may not have been able to if we were to be...

Intertextuality

Intertextuality refers to when one media text incorporates another media text and in the process alters said media text. Intertextuality has many sub types such as: Pastiche: Pastiche is when a media text imitates another media text or style in a positive way. Marina and the Diamonds' music video for 'Shampain' is a pastiche of Micheal Jackson's 'Thriller' music video as a bunch of undead girls join her for a choreographed dance sequence. The music video for 'Gives You Hell' is a pastiche of a typical 50's neighbourhood, with the 'family oriented' side of the warring neighbours dressing in typical 50's fashion too. Parody: In a parody a media text often uses references from another media text to to mock it. Bo Burnham's 'Repeat Stuff' music video parodies Justin Beiber in parts of his music video as a way to poke fun at the unoriginal and vague music they produce which plays of...

Eman's Media Portfolio

Search This Blog