Music Video Ideas Write Up, by

Josh Hunter and Jonathan Warren

Our music video will be produced to go with an electronic dance music sound track and for this reason we will use different techniques and effects to make it conventional to this genre of music.

We have decided to make a performance music video because we feel this is a conventional type of video for dance music in general. For this we are going to need a club/venue for our setting. We are planning on clearing a space in a garage and then putting in the necessary props to make the garage come to life and feel like a real venue. Props such as strobe lights, laser lights, a stage, speakers and DJ Decks will hopefully all be used to achieve this. A lot of these props are also part of the iconography that comes with the genre of electronic dance music, such as the flashing laser lights which can be seen in almost all music videos within this genre. The DJ Decks are also extremely conventional of the genre and so are a must-have in our video.

We are also planning on then filling this small space with about 20 people to serve as the ‘crowd’ for the video making it feel more like a small VIP performance. We will then have two artists on stage acting as ‘Cube Party’ using the DJ Decks and dancing to the music. The two artists on stage will be wearing masks because some artists in EDM music like to make an illusion that the character on stage is the product of their chosen stage name, such as Deadmau5 who always performs wearing a huge mouse mask. In terms of costumes the artists will be wearing contemporary t-shirts, jeans and trainers, as will the audience as well, because if it were a real performance the space would be very hot and so to keep the video believable we will ask participants to wear casual clothing with few layers on.

Once all of these elements are in place we will be ready to record. In terms of shot types, an establishing shot will be taken at the start to make sure we have footage that can be used at the start of the video to show the audience what kind of setting the video is taking place in. we will try to get a lot of wide angle shots to utilise the space and to also include as much of the crowd in one shot as possible. We will also use high angle shots to add some interesting angles into the video as well as trying to make the space seem bigger than it is. A lot of mid-shots of the artists from behind and from the side may be taken as well because this will give us footage that shows both the artists and audience dancing in sync and establishes the relationship between them for the audience watching the video.

In regard to editing we will paste in the icon used for ‘Cube Party’ over the top of the establishing shot to emulate many electronic dance music videos that use this technique, it also helps to introduce the track and video. We will also make a lot of quick paced cuts to

match the speed and energy of the track we are using. In the editing process we will most likely also correct the brightness and colour levels because they may need changing due to the nature of our setting which is a dark garage with no professional lighting. Other effects we may add include flashing lighting if we feel that the video needs a bit more excitement to match the energy of the music.