After we decided on our band and our song I decided to look into the genre a bit more so I could get a good idea of what sort of characteristics come with the genre of Indie. The first song I decided to look at is The Suburbs by Arcade Fire which is the music video above. The video starts with a group of young people all cycling together through a housing estate. I thought this was a prominent aspect in order to emphasis the genre as the people in the video are all teenagers and this would have been important as for Indie music the main audience is young people so seeing people of a similar age in the video would mean they are able to make a connection. Also the fact that they are cycling down the road is also important as this tends to be key in a lot of music videos and the idea of having a bike somewhere in the video seems as though it would be important; possibly to symbolise their freedom but as they are all young people not able to drive a bike is the next best thing. It then zooms into a mid shot of one of the cyclists and you are able to see in more detail what he is wearing. The fact he has a beanie on and messy hair fits with the characteristics of the Indie genre and his general appearance makes it believable to us as an audience that he is very individual himself, which fits well with the genre. A bit after this we start to notice that all the characters in the video have toy guns strapped to their backs which again fits with the reckless and rebellious behaviour that would be associated with rock and indie music and alongside this is the fact all the members are cycling in the middle of the road which is against the law and therefor could be classed also as reckless. Then at 1:25 we get a good look at all the characters in a mid shot and they all seem to be very individual themselves; not fitting into the attractive stereotype that we are used to seeing on TV. This would be because the genre itself does mean individual so by showing the characters as very unique and different it emphasises the genre again. We then see them shooting some people with their pretend guns and all the characters are laughing and everything seems very carefree and spontaneous which hugely fits in with the rest of the music video.
There is progression shown in the video and we see the teenagers as a bit older. They seem to have developed a violent side to them (very fitting with the genre stereotypes) and start to beat each other up. I also noticed here that the colours they use are very interesting as they seem to be very neutral, lots of greens and browns, so this could be to do with the rough voice and natural instruments you tend to hear when listening to Indie music. After this you see three people in a room and here is where I got the feeling that relationships between people, even just friendships, is a key aspect to indie music and their accompanying videos. I think also that rebellion against any sort of in charge figure should be explored more in our video as there are lots of scenes during this where the police/army are very important and are kept on screen for a good couple of seconds.
We then move into a night scene where we see one of the lads at what we assume is his home. Here is where you start to realise that something key to indie music is the fact of poverty or not having a lot of money so this would be something we would have to look at when making decisions on costume and setting. We then see one of the boys look at what used to be their bike which I think is a good representation of the freedom they no longer have and the fact the director of this music video has chosen to focus on that makes me think that freedom or lack of it is an important thing we need to look into when making our video. It then ends with a fight scene between two of the boys and then flashes onto a clear blue sky.
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