How are the conventions of the indie genre evident in Foster The People music video Pumped Up Kicks - In progress

Common settings for Indie conventions are usually located at cities, neighbourhood, studio, parks and woods these locations usually create mysteries which makes the audience focus on the performance in stead of the narrative, this way it makes the audience to focus on the talent and passion of the band rather than their success.

Foster The People is an American Indie Pop band consisting of the lead singer Mark Foster and drummer Mark Pontius. The band's production actually consists of a variety of genres such as Indie Pop, alternative rock, indie electronica, alternative dance and Neo-psychedelia. His father encouraged and persuaded him to follow his musical career. This led him to move with his uncle in Los Angeles. He worked various jobs during the day and at night found himself cruising down the nightlife and parties where he engulfed all the different tribal subcultures. After several unsuccessful tries to create a band he ended up finding a job as a commercial jingle writer spent eight consecutive weeks at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States, making it the first Billboard Alternative Billboard Alternative Songs number-one single to crack the U.S. top 5 since Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" in 2009. Furthermore, 'Pumped Up Kids' received a Grammy award  nomination for Best PoP Duo/Group Performance. Mark Foster was very concerned with the upcoming trend in depression with today's youth and he expressed his concern on CNN's website saying "I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' when I began to read about the growing trend in teenage mental illness. I wanted to understand the psychology behind it because it was foreign to me. It was terrifying how mental illness among youth had skyrocketed in the last decade. I was scared to see where the pattern was headed if we didn't start changing the way we were bringing up the next generation." In writing the song, Foster wanted to "get inside the head of an isolated, psychotic kid  And since the upload his music video YouTube on 4 of February 2011 it now has reached 225,650,198 views.


Foster The People being an indie rock band follow the conventions of rock in their music videos by having a band performance integrated with some kind of narrative. Furthermore, because Indie rock usually has a much slower tempo and a softer tone than rock they do not follow the generic conventions of rock such as black clothes, long hair and strong back lights which are usually the case. Instead they wear casual clothes such as a plain any coloured shirts , some kind of pants/Jeans and converse shoes. And even though converse shoes and Jeans are often seen in rock bands they do not give the impression that they wear them as a statement but rather because they simply enjoy the fashion. In the 'Pumped up Kids' has a non linear narrative combined with band performance. Cleverly the narrative is simply some 'random' footage of the band hanging out and enjoy their time while surfing and playing frisby. This is perfect for the song as it is intended to encourage those who are suffering from mental illness or depression which is what the song is about, almost simply saying "Enjoy life". Foster The People being a new band at the time, needed to be actually be seen by the audience in order to attract fans and perhaps show and give the audience a taste of how they would be live. This is where the band performance comes in.
A similar indie style music video is by 'Snow Patrol - If there is a rocket tie me to it'
 as they also have a few shots of them enjoying their time by walking on the beach as a group and sending out flying lanterns, both videos have recreatiional activities and also band shots, even though Snow patrol is a solid rock band you can see the rock conventions in Indie bands. 

Music Video Mood Board (Collaboration)

Artist permission.

We chose a song called 'Avalanche' by Bad Sounds as they are modern and quite clearly quirky in their own retro-indie style. The artist was more than happy to let us use it, on the condition that we put it under "Unofficial fan video". 

Applying Goodwin’s Theory

Applying it to Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm

One of the theory is that depending on the genre of the music it has specific features in a video - Genre Characteristics. Arctic Monkeys are a Rock band and therefore the common characteristic is the band itself playing during the music video. Furthermore back spotlights are also very common in a rock performance, it is perhaps used in order to put attention on the actual instrumental performance. It is also seen that rock bands tend to wear black clothing as part of their style. This is true to the majority of rock bands if not all of them. This theory can be applied to most of the genres. For example another example could be of the 'rap' genre. Although,overall the meaning behind rap lyrics has changed dramatically throughout the four decades, from political prejudice and racism in the 1970's to a luxurious life style and showing off their wealth and dicing other rappers in 2016. But the general characteristics still remain such as baggy clothes, chains and the main artist rapping into the camera with a big amount of people in the background 'supporting' the rapper.

 Another theory is the link between lyrics and visuals. In this case, you can witness the link only at some specific times for example at 2:23 the artist sings "Thunder!" and ultimately the visuals are photographs of thunder. This technique helps to develop and enhance the lyrics further for the audience. It could also simply be a cool visual input depending on the lyrics.
Another example is when the lyrics say "kick" the editor of the video clip uses one of the dancing performers moves which involves a kick as a visual link to the lyrics.

Furthermore, the link between music and visuals are very important. This is mainly seen in the editing of this music video. As Brianstorm is a very upbeat and fast song, there are a lot of different camera angles and shots. Throughout the whole music video, there are at least two shots per second. Other slower songs may have only one shot stretched out very long period of time. This intense shot count emphasises the disorientation and links with the title of the song Brianstorm which can also be miss interpreted as Brainstorm and this would be compatible with the chaos that the music video presents.