Hugo Pierre Leclercq, also known as Madeon is a French electro house/dance music producer. He gained popularity in
July 2012 when a video of him performing his mashup 'Pop Culture' went viral on Youtube, receiving millions of hits within the first few days of being uploaded.The song was created by taking samples from 39 different songs that Madeon then mixed together using a device called a Novation Launchpad. The viral video can has now achieved over 14.6 million views, showing how popular he really is.
Madeon first started producing music when he was 11 and ended up winning a competition in 2010 for a remix he did of 'The Island' by drum and bass band Pendulum. Since then he has been remixing various electronic artists. He has listed his greatest musical influences as being The Beatles and Daft Punk. Madeon's first live performance was in April 2011 in Paris when he supported support act to Yelle, and his UK debut was at The Nest in Dalston, London where he performed alongside Jacques Lu Cont.
Soon after the success of the mashup 'Pop Culture' Madeon went on to release his debut single 'Icarus'. This really helped create a name for Madeon, now allowing him to be recognised for his skills as a producer. Leclercq has been featured several times on 15 Minutes of Fame, a segment of Pete Tong's radio show on BBC Radio 1, with both his debut single "Icarus" and his remix for Deadmau5's "Raise Your Weapon" given their first full play on the show.
As a sign of his rapid rise to international fame, in 2012, he was invited to play four major American festivals, the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Coachella in California, Lollapalooza in Chicago, and Electric Daisy Carnival in New York. He also appeared at several UK festivals including performing at the Dance Arena at Radio 1's Hackney Weekend, and most recently as a support act for Swedish House Mafia's sell out final performance in England at the Milton Keynes Bowl.Another great sign og his rapid popularity, his music has been used in a variety of successful media franchises. His song 'Finale' which is the song we are creating a music vide for, has been featured on both the PS Vita advert and as part of the soundtrack to the new Fifa 13 game.
Madeon is soon to embark on his first European tour, with interestingly most of the dates being in England. Me and my other group members are intending on going to the London gig and we feel that it could be a great opportunity to increase our awareness of the target audience of our video. It is interesting seeing that the majority of the dates are in England, and linked in with the fact that many of the songs Madeon has produced are in English, it would be no surprise that this is for commercial reasons. It seems to be him altering to the growing success and popularity of house and dance music within the UK .Madeon's Discography can be seen below:
One of the music videos that I found that links very closely to the idea I had for my music video is for a dance song by Dutch trance music and progressive house DJ Sander van Doorn called 'Chasin'. In the video below you can see the main aspects of the video that I think would go will with my music video. The editing is done in a way that fully represents the music, especially through the use of quick cuts to the beat of the music, different camera angles and the use of special effects such as the cctv type camera overlay. These aspects can easily be transferred into our music video, giving us the effects that we need to make our video fit in with others connected to the dance/electronic genre of music.
Another video that I found that has a lot of features that could be incorporated well into my video is for the song 'Sandstorm' by Darude. Although this is not as totally similar to other videos within this genre of music, mainly due to the longer cuts, it still offers many different aspects that would enhance our video. One of these is that way that the camera is not stationary filming the actors running past, it moves with them. The camera is kept smooth through the use of a glidecam and gives the effect that the camera is floating through the air, without the shaking of the camera brought about by someone running.
The music video for 'Invaders Must Die' by The Prodigy also uses very different techniques, including the use of fade to black transitions. The fact that the whole video is in black and white with only small snippets of colour being featured is also another key feature that we could take into consideration, maybe changing it so that we have snippets of black and white in our video. Even though the video is entirely narrative based, with no signs of any instruments being played or artists singing, there is still a small clip of the artists featuring as part of the actors in the the video. This is an idea that I think could possibly be a good thing to include in my video as it can be seen as a way of the artist promoting themselves within a video where they are not necessarily expected to be seen.
One final video that has influenced the way that I intend to create my music video is for the song 'Graduation' by Gemini. All throughout the video there are focus pulls and soft focuses that give a great effect, one that would help my video look a lot more professional. These different focuses are mainly of the artist when he is singing, but there are also some of the environment around such as in the forest and of the clock. This shows that the effect could work with most things we would choose to try it with. There is also a lot of filming of the environment within the video, showing that you do not only need the video to be constantly relating to the music. This could be connected and justify our idea to create a timelapse of the London skyline during a section of the song we have chosen.
UK Tribes
From the website, and other information and knowledge I have gathered, I can conclude that the people who would be watching the music video I am going to create would fit into the clubber/raver social group. Recently, the clubbers/ravers group have moved more into the mainstream with the increasing amounts of dance and electronic musicfrom artists such as Madeon himself and groups such as Swedish House Mafia, Nero and Chase and Status making its way into the charts. Instead of being a small group it has now become one of the major sub cultures of the youth of the United Kingdom.
According to the UK Tribes website, people linked with the clubbers/ravers group tend to be very into the music that they are listening to, and dress and keep up to date with the latest trends from brands such as River Island, Topman and Urban Outfitters. They also like to go to some of the top clubs in the world in places such as Ibiza, London, Magaluf etc including Cream, God's Kitchen and Amnesia. As I highlighted in my post on music channels, people in the clubbers/ravers group would listen to radio stations such as Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra, and watch music channels such as MTV Dance and Clubland TV.
The original MTV channel now features a lot less on music videos and more on reality television programmes.
Viva is a music video and entertainment channel that replaced 'The Music Factory' in 2009. The channel is owned by Viacom International Media Networks Europe and was originally a German entertainment channel. Viva also became the first entertainment channel from MTV to be featured on freeview, helping the brand to accomodate viewers who may not have access to a subscription based television network such as Sky or Virgin Media.
Kerrang! TV is a music channel that features only music videos from artists that fit into the hard rock/punk/heavy metal genres of music. The channel is owned by Box Television and is loosely related to the well known magazine Kerrang!