Artist Research Assignment; Post Two

Kimya Dawson always performs with her acoustic guitar, automatically seen as a typical convention for her 'indie-folk' genre. From watching videos of her on youtube it is clear to see how she likes to keep the focus on her music as apposed to her peroformances, she doesn't try to make any fancy entrances, routines or extravagant outifts; she sits simply with her acoustic guitar and a mic. This tends to make her stand out as we see a lot of artists these days going overboard with special effects etc for their performances.
Kimya has big crazy hair, piercings and a few tattoos. which again makes her stand fromthe crowd as it shows us that she is proud to be who she is, and doesn't hide anything from us.

Regina Spektor is very simular to Kimya in this respect, as she too, doesn't make a huge effort in her appearance and fancy staging when she performs or in her videos; whilst performing, like Kimya, she keeps her set as her, her piano and a mic on stage, with the occasional guitar player behind her. Her videos however contrast to her performances as she uses a lot of creative techniques, such as the stop motion animation and drawing on her hands. She tends to shoot in the same locations throughout her videos which can get slightly repetitive sometimes, however the quirkyness of her editing style can mix this up a bit and it fits perfectly to the music. In her videos the editing is cut to the beat of the song and a range of camera angles (high angle shots are often used to show her playing the piano and singing into the camera. In the video 'Dance Anthem of the 80s' we see a varied amount of angles, from an establishing shot to some very 'home made movie' styled close ups. The extreme close ups of her face add to the quirkyness of her personality.