Looking at the Conventions of the Acoustic Genre

This track by Ed Shearing has an interesting video which shows some of the conventions of an acoustic genre music video.  The use of a complex narrative is a feature of the acoustic genre music videos, the narrative is a story built with a meaning or emotion behind it. This is used to play with the audiences feelings, toying with emotions, making the song meaningful and more "real". This is prominent in the video "The A Team" by Ed Shearing, with the homeless girl who sleeps with men for drugs. This is what it is like for those who are like her living contemporary British cities and this is what the genre plays on.This theme is also used in "Trainspotting". The reason for the focus on somebody living rough is to draw the audiences attention to how they have to struggle and suffer to survive, making the audience feel sorry for them, upsetting them somewhat. Often acoustic videos will build up to climax, leading the audience along, an example of this is "Better With You" by Five Times August  In this video the man is in love with a fellow teacher and he gets embarrassed by others throughout, slowly building up to the end where he achieved his goal and got the girl.

Another convention is the use of slow motion and fast forwarding, indicating the speed of time, a video that also uses this is "The Remedy" by Jason Myraz. This technique is used when showing time and boredom or representing how long someone is doing something. It makes the audience think about how time passes so quickly.

An aspect that is prominent is nearly all acoustic songs/music videos is that it is about someone, it is mainly male singers which write and sing about women,girlfriends and bestfriends,people who are close to them. There is always an emotional tie in the lyrics which create a storyline based around women characters. But if it is not about someone special then they are usually about world affairs or events within the artists life.