Genre Theory

The genre of a music video sets the audiences expectations and allows them to predict what will happen within the video. This can be useful because audience members can decide if they would be interested in watching a video based on the genre it fits into, therefore it is important to make the genre of a video as clear as possible within the first 20 seconds.
The genre of music which we are going to use will be alternative/indie rock; we will make this clear at the beginning of the video by immediatley showing a guitar being played. In addition we aim to use an opening title for our video and the colours and font will have connotations of indie/rock music.
The genre of the story within our music video is 'romance' as it focuses on a couple and the hearbreak of the boyfriend. This will be clear within the first few scenes of our video (as shown in the photo of our storyboard to the right) because we will show the girl and her first boyfriend in bed, and the new boyfriend will then take his place; this will show the transition from the ex to the new boyfriend and introduce that the video will focus on relationships and love. We will also show the genre of romance through the fonts and colours within the title sequence. In addition the genre will be made clear by the music and lyrics of the song.
On the other hand, as using the conventions of a genre can make the content predictable, many music video creators decide to subvert the genre in order to surprise and interest people and encourage them to question the genre and what is happening in the video. Using subversion can be a successful way to draw in an audience because the video will be something new and is less likely to be seen as boring or unoriginal. Despite this, sometimes sticking to the conventions of a genre can also draw in an audience because people will know what they are going to watch and may be drawn in by the genre itself, for example some people prefer romance to other genres. 
We have decided to use the conventions of a romance video because the storyline will link well with the storyline; Andrew Goodwin suggested a visual representation of lyrics may make my video more appealing to our target audience. A romantic storyline will also allow viewers to aspire to be like the characters or have a relationship like theirs; the ex-boyfriend character will encourage viewers to feel sympathy and could be used as advice or support for people who are going through similar situations to the ex boyfriend. In addition the genre of romance is liked by many; particularly females who make up a large proportion of our target audience, therefore I believe that by using the conventions of romantic videos our video will appeal well to our audience.