Music Video Conventions

 Music videos associated with the alternative/indie genre

Mr. Brightside - The Killers

In the music video for Mr. Brightside by The Killers, lots of convention for the alternative/indie genre are used. The video uses lots of extreme and bright colours with lots of reds, greens and yellows. They have included these to represent the alternative aspect, by not using just blacks and whites it gives the audience a hint about the fun and perhaps weird nature of the music and therefore attracts that audience. Lots of glitter, crazy costumes, weird props and effects are also added to make sure that the audience remains interested in watching. These things also lay down a style for the band, the audience really gets a sense of who they are through the video. After all, the lead singer does star in the video and it lyrically tells a true story about his own jealousy and paranoia when his girlfriend cheated on him. Even their outfits seem like something they would wear normally (at that time, 2004) and it works well to give the audience a sense of the bands identity. The things we see on screen also continually relate to the lyrics of the song. For instance, the lyric "eager eyes" we see a group of 6 men all sat watching the girls dance 'eagerly'. We also see the lead singer singing along the the lyrics throughout the whole video, reacting to what the main girl is doing. We see him say to the main girl "it was only a kiss" in coordination with the lyric in the song. This helps the audience to follow the story and stay connected as we can see the actual band playing out the song. on the lyric "i just cant look its killing me" we see a fast pace montage between the characters in the story and close ups on the lead singer. This makes a real correlation to the lyrics as the audience can see how frustrated the lead singer is, especially because he's attempting to cover his face out of misery. These close ups of the lead singer continue throughout the video and align with Andrew Goodwin about the seven key conventions of a music video. Number four states that the record company will demand lots of close ups and this is a key convention which is included in lots of videos. In an instrumental section around 3 minutes into the video we see the main male character and the lead singer in a game of checkers. as the music slowly gets louder we can see the lead singer gets increasingly more annoyed and when the lyrics do come back in we see him flip the table. This is an example of where the video relates to the actual music, as the tempo and the beat of the drums increases (the music gets more aggressive) the lead singer also slowly gets more annoyed and aggressive towards the other man. This music video does link in with a lot of other videos in the genre with it using bright and intense colours, being slightly odd in the story and the nature and being quite chaotic however this video is quite on the extreme end of the spectrum for the genre. Often in this genre we also see very chill videos with dull colours and not a lot going on, which is the complete opposite to this video. I think this is because the band varies across a lot of genres like pop and rock so they experiment more in what they do and are more likely to cross borders of genre compared to other artists who are solely indie creators for example. The video doesn't really include lots of visual references to other types of media, it just follows the story. The characters are dressed in perhaps more predated themed coats with long and extravagant dresses maybe seen in more victorian period and this is also the same for the men. 

Representation in the video:

The video's three main characters are white and I could spot a few people of colour or different ethnicities in the whole video. It is great that these people are included however there is still a real underrepresentation of major groups in the video especially because there is quite a lot of characters in the whole video. This video was made in 2004 so it could explain this for the time but there still is a lack on inclusivity nevertheless. The entire band is also white. We also see a group of women dancing in unison multiple times throughout the video, they lift up their skirts to the camera as part of the dance. This could be argued that it is just a fun little action from the girls and that it links in with the narrative of the song, of cheating and being jealous. however it still objectifies the women and is slightly inappropriate especially when all of the men in the video don't dance provocatively in any way. The women throughout the whole video are also extremely sexualised, we never really see the women in the video without a man (apart from the dancing). Again, this could be argued to solidify the whole idea of jealousy in the narrative but I do think this could have been carried out in more appropriate ways.