Genre

The genre of our music video could be described as Folk / Pop. Folk pop can be described as a folk song with pop arrangements or a pop song with intimate, acoustic based folk arrangements.
Life Happens falls into the second, this is because the song is very upbeat and fast tempo-ed compared to other folk songs yet has the intimate acoustic based folk arrangements with the instrument use.  

Some recent artists I believe fall under this genre are Eliza Doolittle, Jake Bugg, Lucy Rose, Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons, Ben Howard.

By watching the videos a similar pattern occurs. I have noticed that the videos are very naturalistic for example no special effects are used and the camera work feels natural and hand held making the video more believable.
Another occurrence I have noticed is the use of bikes, either for visual effect or for the artist to travel around.

Eliza Dolittle - Rollerblades

   Jake Bugg- Lightning Bolt












Ben Howard - One Love















Lucy Rose - Middle Of The Bed


















Another similarity between these videos is the use of performance. In mainstream pop videos the performance is often a dance for example Cheryl Cole - Fight For This Love or Jessie J - Domino, instead the performance is the use of an instrument.

Laura Marling - Sophia

Jake Bugg - Lightning Bolt

Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man










Another similarity between videos of the same genre I have noticed is that they only usually include the artist or band there are not a lot of other people in it. Occasionally there will be a member of the opposite gender but other than this the main focus seems to be on the artist. It is also normally the main artist in the video, for example it is not that the artists are singing over a video in which actors are acting or dancing, it is usually themselves playing the roles and singing in the videos.

There also is not often a structured narrative to the video. It feels as though we are following them round as apposed to working out a narrative. The videos are more artistic that narrative lead.
The camera work as I mentioned is often hand held and feels more free than perhaps other genres of music. The editing is also naturalistic and together give a home movie effect.






Adding to the naturalism and realism of the videos point, the artists don't look very styled. They look naturalistic and makes the audience feel as though they are getting to know the artist for who they really are. For example in my opinion.....

... I feel like I know more about Lucy Rose in this naturalistic video than Beyonces'.





According to Goodwin, a good music video should include intertextuality and voyeurism. Folk / pop videos don't display intertextuality and voyeurism that you may expect from more mainstream artist and videos such as Rihanna and Beyonce.

We have taken these points into great consideration. For example we are going to use only one main person in our video, she will be dressed very naturally and not looked styled. She will ride a bike and play the ukelele.