My video will feature one person, my artist 'Free Son' this will be portrayed by myself.
MES and Location:
The location I will be shooting at will be Hessle foreshore (Little Switzerland as the locals call it), as it is a place of natural beauty, and it perfectly fits the conventions of the genre.
Props:
My artists costume.
Indie-folk music videos use little props, as it reflects the 'stripped back' nature of the genre. Therefore the only props I will need are a feather, which I will use to be a catalyst to show the colours changing.
Costume:
I had two options when choosing costume, formal (Smart casual), or very natural. I decided to choose the formal route. My artist is dressed in (from top to bottom):
Shaggy (ish) hair, the artists in this genre care very little about their look, it is not a fashion show.
One convention of indie folk music is nature, this is a huge convention as it is shown in pretty much every indie folk music video. I had ideas whether to defy this convention, but decided otherwise as it would be too drastic of a change to not include nature. I decided on choosing a location of natural beauty i.e a forest or a lake. An ideal location for me would be Hessle foreshore, in Hull where I live and the conjoining forest or 'Little Switzerland' as us locals call it. 'Little Switzerland' is across the city from my house so it would mean going out of where I would usually go, but I thought it was definitely worth it as the views are genuinely stunning and would fit to my genre perfectly.
An example video which influenced my ideas is 'Passenger - Hearts on fire'.
This video features Passenger, the singer walking through a forest, along with an old man, and a woman. The video follows a narrative where Passenger picks up items form the forest, in this case, a toy car, a flower of which he uses a book to press the flower to preserve it, and a stopwatch. He then places it all in a suitcase and buries it. It is then revealed that the old man walking through the forest is an older version of the singer finding the suitcase again. A simple narrative, but one which is particularly powerful as it uses emotive body language accompanied with the soft, free flowing melody to create a tone only really replicated by other videos of this genre.
Close ups+ medium close ups of the artist, this is incredibly common in the indie folk genre as the songs have a lot of meaning in them, so this is to show the audience that the singer means what they are singing, as you can see the emotion.
Nature is a constant theme.
The theme of life is also very prominent.
The cuts depend on the speed of the song. Indie folk is usually very slow, so therefore it is not uncommon to have a 20+ second shot. Different to pop videos as they have many, short duration shots.
Usually, when the artist is singing, it is a long shot of them singing, however, the long instrumentals in between verses, is when they show the narrative of the song.
Shots of the instruments being played is also in pretty much every video in this genre. Even though the guitar isn't shown very much in this particular video, but it is still shown.
Indie folk music has a broad range of listeners as it has elements of many different genres in it, therefore having the ability to attract new listeners.
Demographics:
For indie folk, many things vary for the target audience, especially age between gender.
Male audience
The male audience for indie folk music is an older, smaller age gap of a target audience than females, the male target audience ranges from ages 17-23.
Reasons for this could be the nature of the melodies and the lyrical-to-video relationship. This could reflect Andrew Goodwin's theory of where the music video has a clear link to the lyrics being sang.
Female audience
Females have a much younger, starter age when they typically start listening to indie folk. It is also a broader age-range to the males, at 13-25.
The reason the genre could be more popular with females is that it is mellow and calm. The lyrics could also have a huge impact on this, as common themes of songs in indie folk are love, heartbreak, relationships, nature and beauty.
Mood Board
My mood board has aspects of what my audience would like, and has conventions of what the genre is.
To start I created a blank Photoshop piece and created a background to it using silhouettes of a tree line and birds in flight. Then I went on '1001freefonts.com' to get a font to use as my title and to add my name to the piece. Then I added some images of what instruments are featured in the genre (Double Bass, Acoustic guitar and a violin for example). Then proceeded to add more features to it.
Things which feature in my mood board.
Instruments used in indie folk music.
Indie folk artists.
Indie folk album covers.
Clothing worn my artists.
Clothing brands worn by 'indie' people.
An image I took at the location where I will be shooting my video.
'Instagram filters' - something my survey discovered.
What is indie folk?
Indie folk music is a relatively new genre of music, it started to come into fruition around the 1990's in the USA when singers and songwriters came together from the indie and the rock community. It was influenced by folk music from the 1950's- and combines the two genres of indie rock music and folk music into one.
Examples of artists
Artists which are recognized to be 'founders' of this genre are Ani DiFranco and Dan Bern. However during the early 2000's onwards, the UK got hold of the genre where it exploded and elements of this genre can easily be found in the more popular songs in the current day. For example, Shawn Mendes, a singer/songwriter's current single, 'Mercy' and 'Treat you better' are currently in the UK top 40 singles chart at places 15 and 19 respectively. Other artists which identify themselves as Indie folk include; Bon Iver, Mumford and sons, Passenger, Of mice and men, Ben Howard and countless others. An example of a hugely popular indie folk song is 'Passenger - Let Her Go' which has (at the time of writing this) 1.2 Billion views.
How is the sound identifiable?
The genre produces a very stripped back style of music, this is shown in the conventions of it, because it is so stripped back, electronic instruments will rarely be seen in an indie folk music video, as acoustic/ natural sounding instruments are what makes it, it. Examples of instruments used are:
Acoustic guitars
Pianos
Banjo
Drums
Violin
Harmonium
Mandolin
Double Bass
Nature
Nature is hugely apparent in indie folk music videos. The colours shown portray a realistic, more natural tone to the video, this is also to represent the stripped back nature of the genre, as nature is just about as basic as you can get, the naturalness of it all almost creates an aura around the watcher of the video as it plants you into the location where the video is taking place.
Camerawork
The camerawork varies a lot in indie folk music, one thing which is very common and has a reoccurring factor in the videos is the use of close up on the singers face, around 30-40% of the video is taken up by this. This establishes the protagonist in the video, and allows them to understand the sentimental value of the song. However, the person in shot, never looks into the camera, and looks away once 'eye contact' can be made, this adds to the mood of the song as the viewer can never fully understand the singers thoughts and feelings, despite the expressions shown by them.
Another shot used is the extreme long shots and long shots. These are very popular as it allows the audience to see and understand where the video is taking place, how the video relates to the song and usually adds to the feeling of the song. shot syntax usually follow after, leading to a close up of the artist. Camera angles; Constant moving of the camera is also used a lot, this can represent the constant moving of the artist, as even though they may possibly be still or sitting down in the video, they are never truly still inside.
The artist can be shown in many different ways due to the camera angles used, and it is usually relevant to the song, eg, if the artist is to be shown as a strong character, a low angle shot will be used, and if the artist is trying to be portrayed as a weak character if they, for example are going through a hard time relationship wise, they will be shot using a high angle shot.
NAME:
My artist will be named "Free Son" I chose this name as conventions of indie folk music have natural associations, and there is nothing more natural than birth, and because my artist is male, I felt 'son' is a fitting name. Obviously 'son' isn't really a standing out name so I started mind-mapping other names to put either side of it. examples I thought of were;
"Only and Son" - which I really liked, so I googled it to see if it was a name of an artist already, it wasn't, however, it is the name of an indie clothing company, which was disappointing, as even though I could have still used it, I wanted it to be original.
"One Son" - Although I did like this, idea, I felt it sounded quite generic and dull, so I carried on brainstorming.
"Free Son" - My final decision, I chose this because it was an original idea and also one I drew fairly fond of straight away because of the simplicity of it.
LOGO:
Artists of the indie-folk genre don't necessarily have a logo as such, so therefore it left me with a lot of freedom to create a logo, however I didn't want to fall into a trap where I over-complicate it using a lot of computer-generated effects, as a more natural, less complex logo would look a lot nicer and will also roughly comply with conventions of indie-folk. Firstly, I added a green background to the logo as it has conventions of nature, which I felt looked pretty smart, however, I had an idea to add a faded image behind the text which I decided would be leaves as again, follows the conventions of nature. Firstly I tried a single leaf, and used the tool in Photoshop which changes the opacity of an image and put it to the first logo. I feel this image looked OK at best, so I took a photo of autumn leaves outside my house and used this instead, again I used the opacity tool and placed it to the original logo I created. I feel this is the best overall logo and I will hopefully use this as my final one.
COSTUME:
Outfit choice in location.
The costume of my artist is the part of their identity I put the most thought into, the artists name came to me fairly quickly, however the costume of the artist needed a lot more thought to it, I had two rough directions to follow regarding following conventions of the genre of indie-folk, one being formal, and one being very natural, often matching their setting (which would conventionally be outdoors in nature). I decided to choose the formal attire option. This concentrated what I had to choose from now, but I still put a lot of thought into it. I decided to choose a 'smart but casual' outfit for my artist. Whilst on holiday over the half-term I noticed an 'only and sons' shirt and recognized the name of the brand from when I was choosing the name of my artist a few weeks beforehand, so I decided it would be a nice touch to wear this for my music video, so I bought it. My artist will also be wearing smart black shoes, skinny black jeans and a blazer.
Females in this genre typically wear free-flowing dresses. If I was to add a female into the narrative they would be dressed this way, however, I am not intending to use a female performer.
21-26 Do you remember when we were two beautiful birds
26-30 We would light up the sky when we'd fly
32-37 You were orange and red like the sun when it sets
37-41 I was green as an apple's eye
43-48 You said you loved all the songs
that I'd sing
48-53 Like nothing that you'd ever heard
55-59 And I said I loved you with all of my heart
59-1:03 When
we were two beautiful birds
(Instrumental)
1:03-1:27
1:27-1:32 Do you remember when
we were two beautiful birds
1:32-1:36 We'd sing when the
morning would come
1:38-1:43 You were silver and
blue like the moon when its new
1:43-1:47 I was gold as a
summer sun
1:50-1:54 One day you asked for a
different song
1:54-1:58 One that I just couldn't
sing
2:01-2:05 I got the melody sharp
and the words all wrong
2:06-2:09 Those were the last days
of spring
2:13-2:17 To build a nest we
pecked feathers from our chests
2:17-2:20 Like a book tearing out
every page
2:23-2:27 We weren't to know that
these feathers would grow
2:28-2:32 In to a beautiful
cage
(Instrumental)
2:32-2:35
The song depicts a relationship slowly breaking apart, showing someone who was once captivated by the singers songs and their music. Them being birds symbolizes the music they produce as songbirds are iconic of their songs.
When their relationship stated to go sour, the singer is asked to do too much, "One day you asked for a different song, One that I just couldn't sing" this symbolizes the decay of their love.
The last paragraph shows that their relationship has 'caged' them, despite being made out of something 'beautiful'.
