Thursday 24 March 2011

Jeff Buckley.


Jeff Buckley (1966-1997) was an American Singer Song-Writer, and is often seen as an inspiration to modern day artists of the Indie Genre. It is easy to see why these connections are made due to the individuality, creativity and uniqueness he epitomised, along with being an extremely skilled Song-Writer and Guitarist, which nowadays are conventions of the Indie genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3-_DbEYe7A&ob=av2n
Jeff Buckley- Hallelujah.
(embedding disabled by request)

This video is not disimilar in ways to Mumford & Sons- Little Lion Man, which I looked at previously. The main focus of the video is the artist himself, in the recording studio, performing the song to what appears to be just himself. The colours are limited sepia hues, with no distractions of any props, special costume, or busy lighting. There is no sub-plot or seperate storyline to the video other than him recording the song. All of these aspects, like in the Mumford & Sons video add up to create and portray the message that this artist is "all about the music". This means there is no need for any distractions as it would take focus away from the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAAuBkLAYMQ&feature=channel
Jeff Buckley- Grace.
(embedding disabled by request)

This video is similar to that of Hallelujah, but is not quite as basic. There are shots of the setting, and what is surrounding the artist and his band, but the majority are still close up shots of them playing the instruments and singing. Once again, the colours used are dark, muted tones, the costumes are very casual, and natural looking, and lighting is low-key. This emphasizes the music, and the song which is being performed to enable the audience to not become distracted in what is going on in the video, so that they focus on the music and lyrics.

From watching these videos of Jeff Buckley, and previously of Mumford & Sons, it is apparent that they  are focussed on their music and their talent, as their videos feature lots of close-up shots of them playing their instruments, singing and making the music. It appears obvious that the muted tones, casual costumes, low key lighting and focus on the artist are strong conventions used in these videos. I think that these could inspire us to use conventions such as these in our coursework as we are looking into how artists of this genre typically portray to the audience the message that they "are all about the music" and these conventions help to emphasize this.

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