1. Music Video Analysis: Imagine Dragons- Demons

"Demons" is a song recorded by American rock band Imagine Dragons. It was produced by record producer Alex da Kid, written by Imagine Dragons and Alex da Kid, and recorded by the band. They call themselves alternative rock, but in one of the interview, they said "We don’t want to be a cliché band. We don’t want to restrict ourselves to one genre. We don’t want people to remember us from the genre. We want to let people call our songs as Imagine Dragons' type songs. So in pursuit of that, we push the boundaries of every genre and try to mix them”. This implies that the band does not like to be associated as a particular genre, however they do associate themselves as an alternative rock.

The song appears on their major-label debut extended play Continued Silence and also makes an appearance on their debut studio album Night Visions as the fourth track. "Demons" was solicited to American triple-A radio stations on January 28, 2013 and to modern rock stations on April 1 and serves as the album's overall fifth single and was released as the third single from Night Visions in the United States, and was later released to contemporary hit radio stations on 17 September 2013 as an official single. The lyrics portray the protagonist warning the significant other of his or her flaws.
Most of the music videos has a story, as Imagine Dragons’ new video for “Demons” shows, and the tales often come with very sad endings.

What the song suggests?

It's saying that we as humans tend to set expectations too high for ourselves. We all have "demons inside". We all have troubles. We all battle ourselves sometimes. We are all imperfect. We are all human, and that is enough. :) The song sounds sad, but the message is somewhat positive: embrace your qualities and imperfections, because it makes us who we are. We try to shield others from our dark side, which is fine, but we just need to know that we DO have a darker side. It's woven in our soul, because we are imperfect humans.
The clip, which starts as a standard concert video, albeit one bathed in beautiful blue light, features the “Radioactive”-band performing the heavy mid-tempo track about the demons we all have living inside us before a hometown audience in Las Vegas.

Released on May 7, 2013 and shot in Las Vegas, Nevada at the band's performance at The Joint on February 9, 2013, the video features a mix of live footage of the band and a companion narrative. Various characters with personal hardships are depicted, including a grieving daughter, an anorexic man who stares at himself in a mirror, a victim of parental abuse and a military veteran. The clip ends with a dedication to Tyler Robinson (1995-2013), a fan of the band who died at the age of 17 in March 2013 following a battle with cancer.

Mise en scene

The clip opens with a long shot set in one of Imagine Dragon’s concerts. The use of a handheld camera to film the mise-en-scene concert gives the appearance of fan footage. The tone of the music video is pretty steady, slow and full of emotions as the next shot links to this by breaking the ‘fan footage’ ideology by changing the camera to a steady cam with the use of slow motion effects. Correspondingly a close-up shot of each of the members from the band is shown, which helps to establish their emotions. They each have a serious and sorrow look on their face which again helps to establish the tone of the video.

The video is set at a concert and this is represented by the use of conventions that would be found here. Examples of this are the audience in the crowd, the lighting used, the band performance, the use of instruments and etc...

The camera zooms in from a mid-shot to an extreme close-up shot before going into the flashback of the people linked to the music video.  This is so to establish the person before showing related flashbacks. By zooming into the person, it creates an effect to the audience watching the video of entering the person’s memories.

Sound

Throughout the video the song repeatedly switched between playing as diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound. It is diegetic when the band is shown performing the song ‘live’ on stage. The band singing is also an example of synchronous sound as the singer can be seen singing the song in time with the track. The video also features the sound of the audiences cheering as a diegetic sound, this helps to create the mise-en-scene of a concert performance that is present throughout the video.   It then switches to non-diegetic during the flashback sequences when the song is played in the background but the band is not seen performing. The instruments are also another example of diegetic sound during the concert sequences as the band can be seen playing their instruments.

Lighting

The lighting in the video portrays illumination that usually be seen at a concert, as the crowd has very little lighting placed on them, in comparison to the band who have a spotlight on them, which also portrays the importance of each person, the focus of this being on the lead singer.

The lighting is also used to emphasize the depressed emotions of each of the characters because they are all portrayed under darkness. I believe the characters being in the middle of a crowd represents how each individual could be going through something related to their previous memories and that everyone has their demons.

Also this may represent that they want to conceal away their problems. The teen with his hood up, hiding most of his face, may be the best example of this as he is hiding using his hood and it feels like he is trying to not drawn attention to himself and remain isolated.

The studio lights changes from blue and dark spot light to a brighter and colourful lighting when the sound of the beat gets louder and stronger.

Costume 
The costumes throughout the video are used to represent the stereotypes of each of the people we flashback to as well as the tone of the scene. The woman in the first flashback scene typically wears a black dress to a funeral which also represents her grief over the loss. The guy who looks slim at first turns out to be somewhat of a “geek” given that he uses the traditional geeky glasses. The teenage boy originally seems like a ‘thug’ or a ‘gangster’ since he shows the stereotypical ‘hood over his head’ look giving more of a negative look towards teenagers but at the same time shows how teens are cut off and in their own world, hiding under his hood. During the flashback he wears clothes that symbolize more of a sports person rather than the thug we saw. The use of different stereotypes for the various flashback sequences again brings forward the philosophy of the song, that everyone has their demons.