Mike Dignam Demographics

As our chosen artist is Mike Dignam, I decided to look into his demographics and get to know his audience and how he has developed his appreciation and type of audience. At now 23 years old, mike has received a lot of attention through his music and has highly developed his popularity through Web 2.0 as social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been widely used by his target audience, therefore giving him an advantage in gaining followers. I first found Mike when I was scanning through Spotify where I was listening to some similar artists and Spotify suggested some artist that were related to his style of music. I watched a few videos of his work via YouTube, of him singing some covers of songs which I really enjoyed.

 Focusing on his way of gaining popularity through Twitter, he has over 11,500 followers, which shows that he is fairly known around the UK.

 From looking at his followers and picking a random a bunch of them, I found out that the majority of them are girls, perhaps due to the love songs he writes and his masculinity. It appears only a few males follow him.











I then looked at his YouTube page and discovered that he is fairly known through YouTube as he has gained over 8,000 subscribers and regularly updates his page with recent gig videos and covers that he has made of popular songs in the charts.
Looking at the representation of his YouTube page,  it seems that he has provided his fans with a UK "Heart to Heart Tour" where he travels around the UK not only performing to a small number of people but meeting and greeting them which gives the pleasure of him and his fans of gaining appreciation.

I also took a look at some of the comments some of his viewers and fans have made below his videos. I looked at one of his most popular songs 'Great Escape' which has gained over 56,000 views. The comments include positive opinions such as; "Wow this is amazing", "Can't wait for the tour!", "Quality" and similar others.

All these positive responses say that Mike is a popular musician with a reliable fan base and this shows that our audience is of a similar type and age.

Meeting and Early Planning of Music Video

In our most recent meeting in class, my group and I started brainstorming ideas for our music video which would decipher the image of the artist through this. We thought of a rough idea for the whole video and different effects and cuts that could be used. Due to media and technological convergence, artists need to promote and advertise themselves more harder than ever as a lot more of the population use media platforms to view them. Therefore we need to be positive about the structure of the music video as this will be viewed by the audience of Mike on YouTube.
We started to think about 'how are we going to market our product and provide the right image portrayal of our chosen artist?'

Below shows the brainstorming board we created in class to demonstrate our initial ideas for the music video:-

Finding a Music Artist..

Online Audience Survey

Above shows the online questionnaire we created on the online website of Survey Monkey. This will help us to identify our target audience for our music video and particular genre. After we have posted it around on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and have received some feedback, we will analyse the results from the survey and identify various audiences.

Audience Questionnaire

I decided to ask the members of my family on their opinions of the Indie genre. This will help gather together some audience research from a detailed sample of people from two age ranges, 50 and 20.

Person No.1 - Jill, 51
Person No.2 - David, 54
Person No.3 - Sam, 20

What do you like about the Indie genre? 
- It brings an upbeat but a soothing, catchy feel. I like that it has a different style and I know it won't disappoint But I particularly enjoy listening to Indie Pop, to artists such as Florence and the Machine and London Grammar.  
- I like the different sounds from the guitar, particularly enjoying Indie Rock with the likes of the Arctic Monkeys and The Vaccines. I like their upbeat tunes and how they suck you into their music. 
- The guitar solos mostly, I play guitar myself so I find that I can relate to the genre as I like to play some of their guitar parts. Although I do enjoy listening to Indie Pop, such as Bastille where their music is more electronic or drum & bass. 

Do you ever listen to the sub genre, Indie Acoustic at all?
- Yes occasionally, I think its very relaxing to listen to around the house. I enjoy listening to the likes of Lucy Rose and Daughter where they tend to use interesting sounds in their music. 
- Not at all.
- Not really.

How would you describe generally of an Indie Music Video?
- Natural feel, outdoors, love narrative, lip syncing to the camera.
- Happy, reminiscing over a relationship, natural.
- Cutting rate in time with beat, love story, natural scenes, showing something different to other music videos.

When listening to our song choice, what are your first thoughts for the music video?
- Close up of the guitar scenes, lip syncing sometimes avoiding camera, natural surroundings, showing times when the relationship was present.
- Guitar present in most scenes to help represent the indie acoustic, love story shown throughout, lip syncing, gradually a build up towards an ending.
- Strumming of the guitar, love story, good times. 

Meeting 13/09/2013

In the lesson today we discussed  one of the songs that we are considering for our music video. One of the music videos we are considering is I'll Lie Here by Mike Dignam which presents an indie acoustic style. Mike Dignam is an English male artist who is known for his upbeat tunes and attraction to girls that are fond of the typical songs about love.
We think by choosing this song we can create a good music video that will involve many techniques.

Our ideas include:
- A narrative throughout the video
- Some lip syncing to the camera which will draw the female listeners in
- Narrative featuring a love story which corresponds to the lyrics of the song
- Natural environment with some picturesque and urban locations
- Guitar as one of the main features of the video

Star Theory

I created this presentation on Powerpoint and uploaded it to http://www.slideshare.net/ to depict what the meanings of the Star Theory by Richard Dyer and how a Star can be represented in various ways.

Goodwin's Theory

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics:

This long shot from the the Ben Howard music video Keep Your Head Up shows genre characteristics such as the naturalistic effect of the background with the trees and the sun rising. This supports the genre he portrays which is Folk Indie due to the acoustic styled music and natural characteristic. In this screenshot from the music video, they have used a orange coloured filter over the shot to create a warming image to match the sound of the song and the filter has also made the background of the trees more bold which helps the listeners to focus more on the artist in the video.

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visual:

This medium shot from Kanye West's music video Good Life ft. T-Pain shows the artist as well as the lyrics of the song being in the centre of the shot. This shows that the music video is all about him and his lyrics . The visual representation is also shown throughout the video which allows the audience to know exactly what Kanye means in the song. This particular video helps to demonstrate a relationship between the lyrics and the visual representation.

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals:

In 'Ed Sheeran- A Team', there is a definite relationship between the video and the music. The video is of a girl who has reached rock bottom and is selling herself to pay for her drug addiction. This goes perfectly with the music as it is essentially about drugs and the video helps to portray the emotion that the music is trying to get across. Indie music tends to have a video that goes perfectly with the music, as the music nearly always has a meaning behind it. Creating a relationship between the music and the visuals helps enhance the meaning of the music.


4. Demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work:

This music video for the Gorillaz song Feel Good Inc ft. De La Soul shows how record labels want close ups on the artist to show their motifs. This is shown especially on this close up shot of one of the characters of the band. This is especially iconic for the band Gorillaz due to them being all about the animated characters and not having an image of them individually. So this makes the record label portray an iconic image for the band.


5. They frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body:

In the music video Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell Williams & T.I, women are portrayed as the centre of attention throughout the video demonstrated by close ups on the female's faces. This makes the audience be drawn to the females also due to the men in the video having a voyueristic effect upon feminism as their eyes are on the women.

6. Intertextual reference of other artists products and texts

One example of intertextual reference in a music video is in 'Lady GaGa - Just Dance', where Akon another pop artist is featured in the video sitting on a sofa. This refers to the fact that he helped produce the music with Lady Gaga. Intertextual reference is used often with a variety of different artists, it helps associate artists with different genres and different types of people. 

Song Choice

Having earnt the permission to recreate a music video for song 'I'll Lie Here' by Mike Dignam, we would therefore like to use this song as we think that selecting a song from the acoustic Indie genre would be a good route to go down as we can relate to the young style of the music. I think this song will work well as the lyrics are quite understanding and it provides a fairly simple storyline to translate into a music video.

Including the lyrics in the video below identifies the meaning of the song and how we could interpret the lyrics into a narrative for our music video. Due to the acoustic indie song, compared to other genres such as pop, we believe we don't have to show the artists' image throughout the video and lip syncing them to the music as it's more about the meaning of the song.

Permission for Song Choice

We have contacted an artist over the use of a song called I'll Lie Here originally by Mike Dignam. We managed to find this artist through Spotify and compared to other similar artists such as Ben Howard and Daughter, Mike is less well known. His genre is represented as acoustic indie but along with an upbeat tune which relates to the genre of indie pop.



To try to contact him, I emailed his management team through Gmail in which they replied to confirm we could use 'I'll Lie Here' by Mike Dignam.

Music Video Analysis -Editing and Camera

Beyonce - Single Ladies

The music video for 'Single Ladies' by Beyonce is very well known due to the classic dance routine and the formation of three girls with the main spotlight upon Beyonce. Beyonce's music is highly popular all over the world and is known as an inspiring icon to the youth today. Her genre is generally R&B and Pop which is how she attracts her target audience from young teenagers to 40 year old's. Beyonce's music video for 'Single Ladies' is known as her signature as an artist due to her hair and the dance routine that most of the public today would have seen.

Camera and Editing

• Establishing shot at beginning (fading in from a blackout) sets the scene of a dance stage where the audience will see Beyonce and two dancers dancing in sync to the music, which brings out the sex appeal of the video due to little clothing, heels and the way the artist is dancing.
• Close ups on Beyonce's face, hand with metal on (indicating the robot theme), clothing and the lighting which helps the audience to focus their eyes on Beyonce not the other two dancers as much. 
• Panning around the performers demonstrates the convincing side of the video as it shows the artist from all angles and that she's actually dancing.
• Close ups to longs shots to show the comparison between Beyonce and the other two dancers.
• Some low angles shown to demonstrate the power, the spot light on Beyonce also supports this.
• Eye line - the audience eyes will be drawn to the centre of the screen in which the singer will be. The different clothing of the singer also supports this as you notice the contrast to the dancers. 
• Master shot shown throughout - Three ladies seen through a long shot to draw out the sex appeal and give contrast to the background as they are in black, bold colours. 

Music Video Analysis -Audience

The Funeral - Band Of Horses

'The Funeral' by Band Of Horses is a classic song of 2006 which has been highly used in TV Dramas such as the american hit TV Series One tree Hill, 90210 and Gossip Girl. The music video is very different to what the audience would expect from the Band Of Horses as it combines the black and white years of the 1950s by using a grey scale filter and filming in a particular style. Considering that the Band Of Horses are a male band, the general audience would be expecting a group performance or at least some of the members featuring in their music video. However this is not the case, in contrast to their other music videos and other similar artists such as Radical Face and Radiohead, 'The Funeral' uses a narrative of abusing alcohol after a special person has passed away in which many audience members can relate to. 

The genre that the band makes is known as indie rock, southern rock and alternative country as it brings across an unusual style which attracts a variety of different listeners and ages. Personally I would consider this band and song to be targeting 18-60 year old's as it not only links to the fact that these ages can legally drink alcohol but that these ages have experienced a lot more of grief due to how long they have lived. The slow, soft instrumental music also supports this as it brings an emotional feel towards the listener. Unlike teenage bands such as One Direction, Band Of Horses' music video presents an older lifestyle and tells an emotional narrative which draws the audience into their storytelling. 

Music Video Analysis

Mika - We Are Golden




'We Are Golden' by English singer Mika was released in 2009 which like his other music is known to have a very lively feel. It involves a variety of bright and bold colours throughout the video which tend to symbolise Mika as an artist and his unique style which always manages to attract attention. The main plot of the video consists of Mika dancing and singing about in his bedroom in which he expresses himself fondly by performing his music to the camera through lip synchronisation. He portrays the sense of 'fun' and 'freedom' whilst showing a collection of items and toys which seem to be vintage and old fashioned; representing the 'Golden Years' which the song is based on. The music video is cleverly done, as it successfully manages to attract a variety of people, from young to old through the bright colours and the contrast of currant and past times shown in the items and the design of the setting. 

Mika's genre is based on rock/pop music especially in this song which provides fast melodic music with the meaning of the lyrics being based around how to live life to the full and how our age group is the 'Golden' age therefore we should enjoy life. 

Camera:
- At beginning, first shot, close up of casset presenting 'Mika' on the front telling and reminding the viewers who the artist is. This also implies that the music video is based in the past, as cassets are known as old compared to Ipods or CDs.
- Establishing shot at beginning, showing the audience the setting of the video, you also see Mika jump of the bed implying he's like a child especially with the props in the room and the costume he's wearing.
- Another close up of the casset showing the name of the song to the viewers. -gives a long introduction to the audience, provides eager and interest.
- Low angle of camera to indicate powerfulness of Mika, child like as seems like camera is on the floor looking up at him.

- Aerial shot of him on the colourful carpet in his bedroom, showing the bold colours, he look up at camera, central and eye line is towards you as if he wants you to come and join.
- Shots displaying Mika (seeming to hang from the camera lens) and fly around when creating the sense of carelessness.



Mise En Scene:
- Gold boots shown in establishing shot at beginning, identifies the unique, adventurous and ambitious style Mika takes on. - recognition of a young feel to the video.
- Long shot of bedroom establishing the setting of the video. -shows the child like feel of the video, very bold and contrasting colours, individual style which creates the fun and freedom element of the video.
- Fairly messy bedroom, indicates the stereotypical boys bedroom.

Editing:
- Cutting rate fairly fast, cuts to each toy/item in room in time with drum/beat of song. -provides interest of toys for audience, -can't keep up, intriguing.
- Some shots are sped up demonstrating the child like approach that Mika is showing, like a kid running, full of energy.

Media Group

I was told this week that throughout this media A2 project I will be working along side Aimee Kemp (http://aimeekmedia.blogspot.co.uk/ ), Danny Buckley (http://dannybuckleya2media.blogspot.co.uk/ ) and Ben Start (http://benstart3.blogspot.co.uk/ ).