Riot

Van

Arctic Monkeys
A Brief History of • The English indie rock band
formed in 2002
Arctic Monkeys • They come from Sheffield
• Consists of Alex Turner
(Lead vocals and guitar),
Jamie Cook (Guitar), Nick
O’Malley (Bass guitar,
backing vocals), Matt
Helders (Drums, backing
vocals
• They have produced 3
albums so far and have
numerous number 1 singles
such as ‘I bet you look good
on the dancefloor’ and ‘when
the sun goes down’.
 Genre Codes
Similar bands to the Arctic Monkeys are:
• Kings of Leon
• Razorlight
• Kasabian
When researching the codes and
conventions of music videos within the
indie rock genre we looked at music
videos by these similar bands as well as
some of the music video’s already
produced by the Arctic Monkeys.
 Genre Codes
• Performance is seen in most indie rock music video’s,
therefore making this a very common code/convention of this
genre. The Arctic Monkeys usual style of video focuses on
performance, sometimes accompanied by some narrative
sequence, as is seen in the video for ‘When the sun goes
down.’
• Following the narrative of the lyrics is also common, as
frequently rock and indie bands release songs which tell a
story within their lyrics
• CGI is something seen predominantly in music video’s of the
‘dance’ genre, although it can be seen in the Arctic Monkeys’
video for ‘Crying Lightning’
• If we input this into our indie rock video we would be
challenging the genre codes and conventions for indie rock,
which tend to focus on realism.
 Ideas
• The lyrics to ‘Riot Van’ has a narrative of it’s own
• The lyrics tell their story about encounters with the police
• Therefore if we made this video we are likely to use
Goodwin’s theory of portraying a relationship between
the lyrics and the visuals,
• We would use the scenes in the video to illustrate the
story told by the lyrics.
• The pace of the song is slow and will suit a video with
longer length shots, scenes and no quick pace editing and
frequent shot changes.
 Rejected Ideas
• Andrew Goodwin’s other theories are to:
• Portray a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the
contradicting the music, this is an idea we have rejected as we
think it is more fitting for the video to match the lyrics narrative
than to oppose them.
• Voyeurism (the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people
engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity,
or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature) is a
common theme within music videos, predominantly within the
dance genre, but even within the rock and indie women are seen as
‘sex symbols’, arctic monkeys themselves show examples of this in
their video for ‘Brianstorm’ however as this doesn’t relate to the
theme of this song in particular, therefore we wouldn’t input
‘voyeurism’ to this music video.
• Intertextual references is an idea we have also decided to reject as
the idea doesn’t seem to apply very well to this song choice.
• Finally, a performance video is something we would choose to
input but in relatively small amounts, as opposed to having
performance throughout
 Final Idea
• If we were to make the music video for
this song, we would include scenes of
the band playing either at a gig, or in a
recording studio.
• Also we would swap between
performance and sections of the
narrative, visualizing the lyrics.
• For the narrative section, we would use
black and white film, to signify it being
set in the past.
• We would use younger actors,
suggesting it was the band in their youth.
• We would include a lot of close up and
cut-away shots, of police men, vans,
lights, alcohol etc.
 Representations
• Within the narrative section of our video we would
represent teenagers in the same way that stereotypical way
they are portrayed by the media, as ‘yobs’, anti-social,
drinking excessively and causing trouble. However, as the
target audience will be fans of the Arctic Monkeys they’re
likely to be teenagers themselves and consider their
representation to be relatively accurate and humorous.
• Similarly, our representation of the police will be equally
as accurate and humorous for the youth audience, as they
would attempt to restrain the teenagers inebriated by the
alcohol, and be unsuccessful. This is counter typical to
how they are generally seen by the media who like to
portray law enforcement as strong and powerful.
 Resources Needed
In order to produce this music video we
would
require:
• Some teenagers to act
• One or two adult actors, police uniforms
and a police van
• Performance clips of the Arctic Monkeys

All of this may not be easy to acquire.