CONEVTIONS OF INDIE FORM AND GENRE

I researched the genres of Pumped Up Kicks as I knew that it would have hybrid genres, I discovered that it consists of these genres:

·         Indie pop

·         Alternative rock

·         Neo-psychadelia

Indie Pop Conventions

• vibrant colours/filters
• vintage filters
• abstract - natural, fictional, unknown settings
• signs and symbols
• sometimes black and white filters
• props
• retro costumes
• depth of field https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sb7eWqET_Y
• bright lights
• contrast from day to night
• fade to black at the end - ending a story
• rhythmic editing
• artificial lighting

Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know

The male protagonist starts out clean (naked, vulnerable), the slow 48 second pan from his feet move up his body to reveal his face. His anger and bitterness over his previous break-up grows, the lines start to appear around him and then on him.  The paint fills in to cover him up, and he wears his unhappiness like fitted clothing.  The sharp angles and different colours blend him into the wall so that he himself becomes hard to distinguish from the world around him.  He is losing himself to the break up.

Then the female comes in (Kimbra).  She starts already dissected by the paint, but as she acknowledges her pain, the paint disappears.  For her, she lost herself during the course of the relationship (“Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over/but had me believing it was always something that I’d done”).  Her resolution to stop living in guilt for things that he had done releases her.  She sheds a single, barely visible tear before the paint begins to go.

Both he and she appear naked in the video.  For him, this nakedness symbolizes his lingering vulnerability to her.  As he progresses through his emotions, he comes to the conclusion that she is just somebody that he used to know, and he becomes closed to her.  In deciding this, he also rejects something that is essentially him.  He lets himself be lost to his anger.  He begins clean and ends broken and covered. Whereas the female begins covered and ends naked.  When the paint starts to disappear from her body, her negative attachment to him also disappears.  The way he treated her (“I told myself that you were right for me/but felt so lonely in your company”) caused her to lose her vulnerability, and without him, she has the chance to start again.

The nicest thing about the Kimbra reveal is how it forms a visual pun. The animation has been filling in the background, and now the camera is moving to fill in more scenic space. This is matched, in a sense, by the way the song's arrangement gradually introduces instruments, both before the first refrain, and then again, during the Kimbra reveal.

Somebody That I Used To Know Music Video Analysis from tashaxgs

Florence and the Machine - Cosmic Love

Cosmic Love Music Video Conventions Analysis from tashaxgs