There are many codes and conventions of the Indie pop genre that we can easily incorporate into our own video to make it distinct to the genre.

Some of the artists we have looked at to influence ideas of our own:

Lana Del Ray Taylor Swift Florence and the Machine Ellie Goulding Beyonce Rihanna

Some of these were also looked at for more ideas on how women are typically represented and in what ways. For example, Beyonce and Rihanna's music are not examples of Indie-Pop music, however they show the representation of women in varied and interesting ways.

1. One of the key features of indie-pop music videos is the use of a narrative alongside the performance, normally involving a theme, explaining to the audience the story behind the lyrics of the song, most linking to love and relationships of the artist or characters in the song.

Taylor Swift-Love Story

Uses the famous story of Romeo and Juliet to explain her love story along with the lyrics, treating it like a flashback to an older time, with flashes to the same two characters in the present time and also Taylor performing the song.

Florence and the Machine-Rabbit Heart

Uses a strange, alternative world look to represent her story, incorporating ideas from Alice in Wonderland, Religion and other places to make her love story alternative, individual and recognizable to her individual style of song and music video.

Lana Del Ray- Ride

In this particular video, Lana Del Ray shows her lyrics through portraying love as being free, living life to the full and uses a lot of her American origins in the video, for example the American flag appears a lot in this and the majority of her other songs, possibly showing a particular theme to her album.

2. Many of the indie-pop music videos use a filter over the top of clips or the entire video to give a certain idea to the viewer, such as memory, age to the video, or showing the clip in a positive or negative light.

Beyonce- Flaws and all

In Beyonce’s video, there is a filter over the entire video, showing it as aged and almost like film reel material, through use of the “bad television” flicker that our group is keen to use on our own music video. This is effective in keeping the viewer’s interest and showing the images as a story to visually explain the lyrics to the audience.

Ellie Goulding- Your Song

Ellie Goulding uses a filter on the ‘memory’ clips of her video to show them as the past, thoughts and also as a fictional story to accompany her performance side of the video, which looks as if in the present time, with no obvious filters or effects.

Rihanna- Only Girl in the World

In this particular video, Rihanna has used almost a red glaze over her visuals to make it seem as if all the light in the setting is red. This shows her as glamorous, provocative, and cute and links to her lyrics with her being the only person shown in the entire video, performance and narrative. It also fits in with the themes of her album and to her as a performer.

3. Another convention of the genre is to use the mise-en-scene to show the setting of the video (usually abstract, natural settings) with the artist showing through the use of the setting that it is a fictional idea and is the narrative part of the video.

This idea is shown in all of the music videos I have looked at, from Florence and the machine using an Alice in Wonderland themed forest scene, to Taylor Swift and her use of a castle and themed costumes to portray her love story. So this is a very strong, popular theme in the majority of Indie pop and also female pop videos.

4. These videos also use camerawork, to show a heavy focus on the artist and their performance, rather than a narrative that doesn’t include them, which is a feature used a lot in other genres, such as alternative rock.

The videos in this genre use a lot of close-ups on the artist’s face to familiarize fans or an audience who are being introduced to the artist, to their appearance, to make them more recognizable to the audience in future.