LEWIS WATSON DEMOGRAPHICS

Lewis Watson is the artist of the song we have chosen to do, he is a 19 year old singer/songwriter with a interesting and distinct acoustic/indie sound who I first came across a while ago when I stumbled upon his tumblr where I noticed he did covers of songs that I liked, his covers became watched more and more which in turn made him upload some of his own stuff.

He has over 35 thousand followers on twitter who are able to receive constant updates about his life and next music projects. A quick look at his followers and it was apparent that the majority of them were teenage girls. 

He has over 45 thousand subscribers on his youtube account and well over 4 million views and uses the social network as a platform to share his stuff with the world. The song Windows by Lewis Watson (the song to which we will make a video to) already as a video on YouTube and has over 80,000 views and lots of comments. I looked into who commented on his video and the majority were girls which made sense in relation to his twitter followers although some comments were by people who can relate to his songs and are similar to him. I then looked into the demographics of the video and that showed that mainly Females aged 13-24 years old had listened to it but that males aged 13-17 have also watched it too. His music is popular within the UK, Ireland and even Australia, he just recently got back from a little tour there. 

I also had a look into how the people that watched his video cam across it and the majority was linked from either other videos of his, his twitter/facebook or from a google search.

His facebook like page has nearly reached 24 thousand likes which is a huge amount, and the majority of this likes come from females aged between 13 and 17. It also shows that the most popular like location is in the UK and is London. More people than ever are talking about him and he shares a lot of photos and gig information through this page so it keeps everyone up to date.

He has many social media platforms to use to reach out to his fan base which evidently are the ones that are most likely to use this sites. 

WINDOWS LYRICS

'windows' 

i'm not here to startle you
hell, i only came 'cause you asked me to
it's such a shame that we can't renew
all those feelings that we shared back a month or two

you know, i kept everything that reminds me of us
it sounds weird but your picture's still hung up
i've tried getting distracted by other stuff
but that's not enough

i'm sleeping with a pillow, under lamplight.
freezing cold, 'cause you always liked the windows opened wide.
just so you know, i'll be here when you make it home.

i'll call you up at like 3am, again
just to make sure you know that i don't mind waiting,
although the call will end with us both saying
that we both hate this

i'm not sleeping too well, now i'm sleeping alone
and all you have to do is pick up the phone
and i'll come running to your aid but i'm sure you know
this won't help us grow

i'm still sleeping with a pillow, under lamplight.
freezing cold, 'cause you always liked the windows opened wide.
just so you know, i'll be here when you make it home.

IDEAL AUDIENCE MEMBER

As our artist fits into the Indie acoustic genre, our typical ideal audience member will be a female aged 17 as, from looking at Lewis's and other Indie artists demographics, this fits the profile the best. They would have to have previous knowledge of what the conventions are regarding indie acoustic; so, emotional and personal lyrics, solo instrument which is usually a guitar or, on some occasions, piano. The girl would be able to relate to his lyrics in some form; most typically in a relationship situation. Also, the girl would be around a similar age to the artist and be able to relate her lifestyle or adapt her lifestyle around him.

NARRATIVE IN MUSIC VIDEOS

Today, in my lesson we looked into the theory behind music videos relating mainly to narratives. There is a lot of theory behind music video narratives, more than I thought there would be.

NARRATIVE IN MUSIC VIDEOS on Prezi

FIRTH, 1998

Music videos can be characterised by 3 broad typologies. 

PERFORMANCE

Performance is used in music videos to give the viewers a sense of a concert experience, and depending how good the performance looks it could bring up ticket sales. Visuals that are mostly orientated by performance show the views that the actual recording and playing of the music is the most important factor to the band/artist. Examples of videos that contain this are ones by The Killers and Ed Sheeran as they use real concert footage and also give the audience a little behind the scenes view of themselves.

NARRATIVE

Narrative within a music video is usually linear and tends to evolve around a love story. "Action in the story is  dominated by males who do things and females who passively react or wait for something to happen." - Schwichienberg, 1992. Essentially they are all based around a story whether it be related to the songs lyrics or not, it more or less always uses words, factors or feelings from the song. The main genres to use a narrative are R&B and Pop although it is very common across all types and sub genres. 

CONCEPTUAL

Conceptual videos contain metaphors to create a mood, ones that offer multiple meanings to different people, and the visuals don't necessarily have any relation to the song.

All these types explain the form and describe the content that has been chosen either by the artist or director in a way to attract views and please fans and audience members and also convey messages both direct and indirect. 

GOODWIN'S THEORY EXAMPLES

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics..

The genre of Kanye West's Homecoming video follows suit with Kanye's usual associated genre of RnB. The video itself uses black and white lighting effects to give a harsh, bold and strong presence of the artist. A recurring theme in Kanye's music videos is that he portrays himself as both physically and mentally strong. This is apparent in Homecoming as the use of the low angle camera shots make him seem powerful and domineering over his audience, as if he thinks himself high over them/ The video is about Kanye visiting his 'hometown' of Chicago, therefore the panning shots and close up shops of him looking around Chicago and reminiscing on his childhood. The further close up shots of the kids could represent Kanye, himself, in his childhood. However the low key lighting keeps specific facial details ambiguous. The city is frequently shown inside the silhouette effect of Kanye and Chris performing, symbolising that the city is a part of him and he takes it everywhere with him.

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals..

There is a significantly detailed use of cross fading, switching from a mid/ tracking shot of Florence dancing in the center of everyone to a close up of her hand resting on the side of her face. There are potentially many reasons why the director chose to use this editing technique however one reason could be for textual or lyrical cohesion. The song 'Rabbit Heart' repeats the line 'Raise it up' multiple times which, I believe, to have some spiritual significance. As in 'raise it up' from the dead which the seemingly not choreographed dancing implies. This theme is carried throughout the video as another time she is pushed out to sea on a coffin-like box which has biblical references.

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals..

Usually, there is a relationship between music and visuals; especially in mainstream/ hip hop videos. An example of this is when there is a guitar solo being performed during the song and the camera usually focuses on the musician/artist performing the solo with his instrument. In Dappy's song 'Rockstar' featuring Brian May, towards the end of the video there is a jump cut into a mid shot and close ups of Brian performing his solo.

Another example is in Drake's video 'Take Care' featuring Rihanna. The song itself is about taking care of a partner or a person in which you are in romantic relation with. During the video, Drake, himself, and Rihanna show signs of affection between each other as they are sitting close together and touching each other in a romantic way. 

4. The 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...

Lady Gaga is a great example of a record label's influence as in her video 'Bad Romance' she demonstrates her signature hand gesture of her 'Monster Claw'. To her fans, she identifies herself as 'Mother Monster' and all her fans are her 'little monsters'; this keeps them involved and they feel apart of her and her videos. Below is the video for 'Bad Romance' where she demonstrates this.

5. There is frequently reference to the notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body...

6. There is often intertextual reference...

GOODWIN'S THEORY

Andrew Goodwin, a director of music, came up with theories which feature in his book about purposes and features for music videos.  His theory is generally based around 6 main principles..
- Links between lyrics and visuals, when the words directly link to the video.
- Genre characteristics, the visual representations of the music genre and portrayal.
- Demands from the record label, how the artist is represented through the need of close ups of the artist and may even create motifs which occur frequently throughout their work.
- Performance based, narrative based or concept based music videos.
- Reference to notions of looking, mostly of voyeuristic treatment towards the female body.
- Intertextual reference, the reference to other videos, media texts, artists or products within a video.
- Links between music and videos, the instruments, cutting rate (on the beat) and if the link is complementary or contradicting.
- Voyeurism (insight into artists life, direct gaze, other people looking at the artist, mirrors and screens).

PERMISSION

After we decided on the artist and song we had to get permission to use it so we used our twitter account to tweet Lewis Watson in order to be in direct contact with him, this proved to be a successful way of contacting the artist as it was the most direct as possible as he was able to get back to us straight away and said he would be honoured!

SONG CHOICE

This is my groups chosen song, we liked the overall sound of the artist, Lewis Watson and to decide on an exact song we looked into the lyrics and the melody of them and also thought about potential videos to each and all three of us decided on his song Windows after getting it down to that and Bones. Windows is quite a depressing song with an up beat sound to it which ables us to create an interesting video and story to. The song fits into the indie and acoustic genre. The song itself can be related to situations people may find themselves in as it's probably about a break up and the feelings involved with it. Overall the song will allow us to be creative with our ideas and there is a lot of possibilities and potential references to lyrics.

GENRE CHOICE

My groups chosen genre will be indie.. focusing more on the sub genre of indie acoustic. We chose to do this genre as we felt our abilities would be used to our advantage within the indie genre because we all have certain strengths and combined they compliment each other and we have already proved that we work well together.