'Stay Awake' by The House Of The Old Boat: First Edit

Here is my first draft of the music video for Stay Awake by The House Of The Old Boat:



In terms of when my audiences watch this video, I want there to be an indirect effect on them and it to be their choice to watch this music video. As I'm basing it on an indie folk genre I expect this group of people to be the ones that make it their priority as an active audience, that use media to satisfy individual and group needs, to come and find this video rather than just force it upon them as passive audience. Like Bulmer & Katz theories of the 1970's suggests, I want them to use this video to not only entertain them, but use it as social solidarity and a form of reflecting on their identity through the use of micro elements such as costume and camera techniques that reflect who they are and their interests.

As I have created my video to have a strong narrative that shows the breakdown of a relationship in reverse, I would want my audience to have this as the preferred reading of the piece and be able to pick up the encoding I have included to show this intended idea (Stuart Hall, 1980). This way I would feel my music video has worked and been delivered successfully if my audience read it the way in which it was intended to from my perspective as the director. However how some people have described it so far, I am open to some elements of negotiated reading and that certain elements are read in different ways, as I think this still works with my genre being indie. My audience may read different parts differently as the way they read  it may reflect upon who they are as a person and their social and cultural backgrounds. Indie music is all about relating yourself to the lyrics within songs so I want to push this further and make people relate with the video too. Therefore I have aim for the main reading of my music video to show the deterioration of a relationship shown in reverse and the different events and elements that lead up to it, shown in the timescale of a music video and ending at the same place it started.

I would say through creating this video I have challenged the conventions of a indie folk music video, breaking the grand narrative of the normal timescale of a video and the world in which it takes place in, creating a post modern product. A modernist view on music videos would say the video must be structured of events taking place in order of time. However like Lyotard's theories of the breakdown in grand narratives, my video is postmodern as even thought the scenes are played in current time, the events happen in a reverse timeline of their relationship, therefore starting with the breakup and ending with them meeting. This format challenges the conventions of order and therefore makes my video stand out against others. It is also postmodern through the whole thing being a hyper reality (Baudrillard), that the audience are engrossed in as this is the soul purpose of the video. Everything within it appears so real and like any other relationship, yet these people are just characters and just appear as a story audiences can relate too. Moreover this video mainly challenges conventions of videos through its lack of performance parts. As part of the genre is folk which mainly is known for performance elements, now I have removed them the whole video becomes more of a hyper genre, with audiences not seeing what they would expect to see but still have something that suits their preferences.