Genre - Case Study

The genre of acoustic indie- folk has significantly evolved over the last few decades, with rising stars like Ben Howard,George Ezra and Ed Sheeran successfully exploiting the demand of this modern audience. The music videos for songs, within the genre, such as our chosen track have very typical features that producers use to consolidate the artist’s music and establish them firmly within the genre. From these music videos, as Christine Gledhill argues: “The relative stability of genres enables producers to predict audience expectations.” In other words, the audience have expectations of a music video for certain genre. For example, if it was a heavy metal track, the viewers would anticipate an intense, performance music video. The genre of our chosen track is very emotive and heavily features acoustic instruments. Due to the organic feel of this genre, the audience would expect a video in a natural setting. This is very much the case in famous videos within this genre with artists such as Ben Howard and Benjamin Francis-Leftwich frequently use natural locations in their work. In addition, these kind of tracks usually feature thin textures, often melody and accompaniment, where the singer usually sings just with an acoustic guitar or other unplugged instruments. This emits a raw and personal tone to the track and it is for this reason that producers within this genre usually only feature one, or maybe two, characters in their videos. If it’s just one person singing to camera, the personal feel of the track is reinforced to the audience and like Denis McQuail suggests, “relates to its production.” On top of featuring one or few characters in a natural setting, a convention of music videos within this genre is the use of colour correction/ colour filters. Many directors use these to establish a warmer and calming aesthetic to the music video, matching the sound of music within this genre. Directors use conventions of a genre in their work to “permit the creation and maintenance of a loyal audience which becomes used to seeing programmes within a genre” (Christine Gledhill). However, according to Nicholas Abercrombie, “The boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable.” This proves true for this genre. Artists such as Mumford & Sons, although demonstrating some of the conventional features, have begun to experiment with more performance elements in their music videos. For instance, their video for their 2012 track ‘I Will Wait’ was made entirely from a live performance. Their songs often feature more of a polyphonic texture which often isn’t suited as well to a narrative video, which perhaps explains the videos producers from interchanging the type of videos used. This is just one example of when then conventions of genres can adapt and evolve. Other artists have also began to branch out from the typical features of a music video of this genre. They appear to be breaking the “ideological closure” that a genre provides (John Hartley). For example, Ben Howard and Benjamin Francis-Leftwich have be known to combine narrative and performance elements in their music videos, cross cutting between a natural location and a live performance/ gig. In conclusion, the common conventions of this genre are frequently explored by directors to consolidate an artist’s video firmly within this branch of popular music. Artists however are beginning to challenge the conventions of this genre by including more mainstream elements in their videos. Features such as natural settings, few characters and colour filters are all aspects explored and some that we seek to experiment with during our final production.