Tom's A2 Media Portfolio

Peter, Bjorn and John are a Swedish indie pop/rock band who were formed in 1999 and have had 7 albums in that time (Peter Bjorn and John, Falling Out, Writer’s Block, Seaside Rock, Living Thing, Gimme Some, and Breakin’ Point). Young Folks is a single that was released in 2006 where it reached #13 in the UK singles charts and #10 in the US billboard, and since its release it has gone on to appear in numerous TV shows, video games and adverts.

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The music video for the song was released on YouTube fairly recently, going up on the 6th of November 2015, and has so far gained over two and a half million views. The video has performance, narrative and conceptual elements, since there is a plot to the video, the band can be seen singing and the entire video is animated. Overall, however, it could most likely be referenced to as a narrative video, since it follows the story set by the song itself.

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The music video doesn’t follow many of the common indie conventions, however the fact that it is entirely animated shows that the video is stereotypically indie, as it sets itself apart from many other conventionally popular music videos. The beginning of the video introduces a narrative between two characters, a boy and a girl. The video goes along with the narrative of the song, with both these characters being the singers in the song, as they lip sync throughout the video.

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The video is synchronous with the fast-paced yet calm tone set by the song as it uses swipe transitions between each scene, rather than using straight cuts. Moreover, the video uses a lot of long shots, close ups and two-shots of the singers. The close ups are usually either of the people or instruments being played, which is conventional for the indie genre as it shows off the skill of the band, however this video is different as it is animated, and as such it isn’t actually the band playing the instruments, it’s just an animation of them playing.

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Finally, there is a part near the end where the band is playing instruments on a background of constantly changing shapes and colours. Once more, this is conventional to the indie genre as it’s strange and isn’t a thing that was done by popular bands at the time, therefore setting itself apart from stereotypical music videos.

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