Noah and the Whale- 5 Years Time

Analysis of Generic Conventions

In this Indie-Pop video, the texture is very grainy and gives a feeling of a 1980’s camcorder, a shaky hand held camera adding to the low quality. This is typical for this genre as it adds a ‘DIY’ effect to the video. This effect allows the audience to feel that it would be just as easy for them to create a similar video and this connects the artist to the audience. 

The video is very illustrative, an example being when a bust shot of the male artist has his hands over her eyes, allowing her to peak through in a head and shoulders shot when the lyrics “I’ll put my hands over your eyes but you’ll peak through” appear. Synaesthesia plays a large part in the video. It establishes the difference between the chorus and the verses which is a theory of Goodwin. When the chorus plays (“Fun fun fun”) the artists stand and act out the lyrics by pointing to the sky on the beat of the words, dressed in bright yellow boy scouts clothing, even though they are in their late 20’s (a theme of youth and childhood antics runs through the video). It happen again in later chorus where the words change to “five years time” where the artists put their hand forward for “five”, make a Y shape with their arms for “years” and make a T shape for “time”. This adds to the animation of the video and gives the part of the audience who are more mainstream the chance to learn the easy routines. The actions the artists make add a sense of child-like fun which in turn would make the audience feel happy. 

The video also has a theme of socialising which is common in Indie-Pop videos. The artists are seen enjoying themselves with local people in a pub. This gives the sense that the band is fun and enjoys normal activities that the audience would probably take part in. This makes the artists seem approachable and the kind of people the audience could get along with if they met. It would also be a cheap, if not free, setting for the band who would not have much money to spend on the video and so any audience member who creates music or film videos could be inspired by this. Most Indie-Pop videos will create the look of socialising by having the setting as their house, a garage or outside whereas a pub is more obvious but works better with the strangers in the background giving a realistic feel.  

Instruments play a vital part in the video because it shows the audience that they are genuine artists who don’t necessarily want the fame but take their music seriously. The scenes where they play instruments are frequent but not continuous as the video is mainly made up of vocals. When there is an instrumental, the artists make full use of showing off their instrumental talent. The second shot is of the female artist playing a ukulele on a sofa; this looks casual and natural. For twenty two seconds the artists play violins and another ukulele and at one point even shake a shaker. This demonstrates their range of instruments used in the song, showing off to the audience that they are definitely not pop stars and have no desire to be. During this the editing is different to that used on any pop video as the editor plays around with chopping up the screen into parts, fragmenting the artists and having one artist playing the ukulele in the top left hand corner of the frame and the artist playing the violin in the rest of the frame. This gives the audience different things to look at and emphasises the creativeness not only in the artists but behind the scenes also.