Genre Research

Ellie Goulding – The Writer

In the video the scenes are mainly performed in a narrative manner, however there is some performance. In the song the lyrics match what is shown on screen e.g. in the screenshot of Birdy she is singing “people”

The video is in black and white which is to create a certain feel/style. The style of the video appears to be vintage, we know this due to the costumes the people are wearing in the video. The vintage style generally fits in with how Birdy appears too.

The screenshot of the old man crossing the road shows dominant ideology as the man looks vulnerable and in need of help which fits in with the name of the song/lyrics “people help the people”.

Birdy- People Help The People

The medium shot shows the audience the setting of the music video and starts to show her outfit. From this we can see that it is set in what looks like a warehouse, but not a dull, grey colored warehouse, a bright colored one. This is a strong representation of the genre which is indie. The genre is very colorful and bright and this is demonstrated through the start of the video. Her clothing in the video is a vintage, shiny jumpsuit. This is typical to the indie genre as well as they always wear vintage clothing which does tend to stand out. The video then goes on to break into a routine dance, which shows the audience it is a performance music video. Similar artists from the same genre do the same things such as Vampire Weekend. This shows that it is common to the genre to create performance music videos to their music. The music video also shows the outfits of everyone else involved. They are all wearing bright colored outfits, which are quite plain as appose to her outfit which is in your face and makes her stand out. The colors of the outfits of the dancers are very stereotypical of the genre as they are bold and bright, which a lot of people connect with indie bands such as Walk The Moon – Anna Sun which is shown on the bottom right. The pace of the video is quite fast in the way that it follows the main woman around in her movements and is never really staying still for more than 1-2 seconds. Although the song is not fast paced, the fast pacing movement add effect to it as it makes the audience feel as though they want to move about with the song and dance. This is again, stereotypical of the genre as Indie bands want the audience to move to it and feel happy and uplift when listening to their music. The lighting in the video is quite dim, but effective as it makes the bright colors stand out without being too harsh, and the lighting also reflects off Feist’s outfit which makes the audiences eyes stay focused on her more than anything else. In this video, Feist is being portrayed as a strong, confident individual in the fact that she is leading the rest of them and she knows what she’s doing. This is stereotypical for the Indie genre as women who fit into this genre are usually strong and independent, as appose to hip-hop where women are portrayed as sex objects.

FEIST