The Country Genre

One of the genres that we will be parodying is Country. This blog post looks at the different key signifiers.

Country is a genre from American popular music that originated in the Southern United States in the 1920s. Its roots originate from the southern-eastern genre of American folk music and Western music. Over the last few decades Country music is becoming an emerging genre in mainstream music charts. Country music is now appreciated more and has gained popularity through the work of artists such as Taylor Swift, Mumford and Sons and Lady Antebellum.

Country music consists of ballads or dance songs with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied with stringed instruments such as banjos, acoustic guitars and fiddles.

The outfits clearly depict the genre with classic cowboy boots and denim. Makeup is very natural to complete the natural look. The set ups are typical and the videos have many recurring themes- Straw/grass/animals...

Musical Inspirations 

Taylor Swift's video was one of our main inspirations for our country shot. The video itself could almost be classed as a parody as they are using the typical conventions of the genre. They are able to create a country feel like setting in a studio with the warm lighting to represent sunlight and hay to create the country setting. The costumes are very typical old country/western making the genre easily recognisable. This is similar to how we want our video to be. 

Much like the Taylor Swift video they have created a country/Western setting in a studio. Unlike the MEAN video they have relied quite heavily on the editing to help create the right atmosphere. They focused less on props and used a more minimalistic setting and used a sepia type filter to create the country atmosphere. Due to the space we have for the suit and our budget this type of setting will be more like ours. We will be using a relatively minimal setting but deep lighting and energetic performances to promote the country genre. However, unlike this video we wont be making the video look old fashioned as the video is being broadcasted in 'modern times' so needs to fit with all of our other genres.