Genre

The song that I am going to be making a promo for is going to indie rock.

Indie rock originated in the United Kingdom in the 1980's. It's quite a diverse genre with many sub-genres such as indie pop and jangle pop. The genre of indie rock was first used by record labels to be more specific in what sort of music they were actually listening to. From then on, the genre had gone out.

Typical indie rock bands such as The Killers and Fun usually make a specific meaning in the lyrics of their songs. When analyzing the lyrics from typical indie rock bands, you find that they always make some kind of reference to life experiences.

The term indie rock comes from the small and less popular bands and artists who usually are quite low budget who normally take the 'do it yourself' kind of attitude to making their music. Although the artists use major corporation companies to distribute their music, they are normally set out to do their own thing when making their music.

Representation of Indie Rock

The Killers

Fun

Taking these two visuals, we find that when taking photos of the two bands, the majority of the members aren't looking at the camera, and the photos are mainly took with a screen behind them. Each of the bands seem to have their own fashion sense. Also, we see that we don't see any sort of 'trait' from any of the bands to show that they aren't too bothered about making any sort of specific representation of them.

What's Important?

Indie rock bands usually have the goal of doing what they do best which is sing and make their kind of music and stick to the genre which is what their target audience likes. Whilst bands like Blur and Oasis were becoming more mainstream whilst abandoning the indie rock genre by becoming more on a larger scale, bands sticking to the indie rock genre seem to be a lot more laid back.

The main target audience for this sort of genre are males and females at a teenage kind of age. Although it can appeal to a more older audience too. This sort of genre can become attractive to people who can relate to the lyrics as the lyrics in the songs they make are very meaningful.

An Example of a Promo

A great example for an indie rock promo is Coming Home by the Kaiser Chiefs. This promo has been done in one shot.

As soon as the video starts, in the first second, we see the main singers face as quite depressed and tired. Which gives us first impressions of the song showing it's going to be quite a depressing song. If we look at the mise-en-scene, we see the weather being quite grey to show a dullness of the song and having a random door in the middle of no where with no home, it makes the audience wonder what's going to happen next, making them to keep watching.

Thirty seconds into the promo we see what we are going to be watching for the next five minutes. We get the impression that it's about something that has happened previously judging from the hints we get from the actors on the promo.

This shot shows the space between each little thing we get to see giving more away on what the song is about. This gives us more of a chance to look at the main singer at moments. We also notice that throughout the whole of the song, it is mainly at long mid shot.

Finally, we see a shot of the band looking out into the distance from all the stuff that they have just walked past. This may suggest a sort of revolution that has been found. Something which isn't usually expected in an indie rock genre is a long shot that's used to establish the setting right at the end of a song.