Question 1

We were asked to make a music video for our coursework using a song made already by an artist but with everything else different. We were told that we should all adopt roles and work together in order to create a video where we all contributed. We had to decide on a genre and within my group make an original and creative music video and two ancillary products to accompany it. We were allowed to use any song of our choice, however we had to inform the record company that we were using their song to avoid committing copyright crimes. The ancillaries were created in the form of a magazine poster and a digipak. This allowed us to present a more informative and well rounded music video which would give the audience extra knowledge. These different technologies meant that we could do this effectively. The song that we chose to use for our music video was Wake Me Up by Avicci. We chose to use this song as we felt that we could relate to the song as we are teenagers and this genre and target audience is us. Therefore we would be able to make a video that could relate to our audience better. This is because of the message that this song portrays; that teenagers face life changing decisions during this period and the stress and expectation place on them by society. If they are led to giving up and failing then a possibility is that they could end up with no job and being disowned by their family. The song’s lyrics “wake me up when it’s all over, when I’m wiser and I’m older” I can understand that teenagers do not want to have to make the choice, they want to stay a carefree teenager, enjoying themselves. From the song my group and I have been able to replicate this concept and we hope that we have shown a unique way to highlight and identify it. Our way of showing it was by presenting two friends who enjoy a night out partying (conventional to teenagers) and one goes back to their house, family and job and the other goes back to a council flat and has no family or job. As a group we are trying to promote our teenage audience to have a good time partying, however we also highlight to the audience the importance of taking education and career prospects seriously as these are the consequences that could occur if you dont. 


 A music video is a visual piece of entertainment combined with sound creating a link between the two for the audience to gain a full understanding of its concept. The conventions of a dance music video (which we did) include a mainly performance based video, with its aim to entertain the audience. Also there are often strobe lighting effects and a party atmosphere is a main theme presented throughout and it is aimed at 16-30 year old's. The stereotypical target audience for a dance genre song would be 16-30 years old's. As this is the age group which have least worries within society and they still should a have a stable family home to go home to if they are still living with their parents. The target audience my group and I have chosen to use for our music video will be age 16-25, as we feel the message of the song will be able to be best understood by this age group as this is the age group who do not know much about what they want to do in life, whether they want to go to university or start a job. I think that the song explains the different pathways that can be taken by the different types of teenagers, whether they chose to follow the media stereotypes or not.

 The dance genre usually focuses on giving positive vibes and makes the audience feel happy rather than explaining a concept which has a serious meaning behind it. Therefore many handheld and point of view shots are often used to make the audience feel like they are part of the scene and that they are partying with their idol. We followed these conventions in numerous ways when creating our music video. For the main duration of the video we used a party scene with many strobe lighting effects and items that are often seen at parties such as alcohol glasses. Therefore the lighting was very dark also so that the strobe lighting would have more of an affect. Our chosen artist, Avicii uses his logo in many of his videos and on album covers etc. 
We followed this idea by making our own logo for our CD covers. We also followed the genre by showing the artists throughout being the main character. Avicii does this in many of his videos where you can see him performing. And because these are new artists we did this intentionally so that our audience could build a relationship with them by seeing their characters and relating to them. We also followed the dance genre by our use of cinematography. We used a conventional setting being a club (although Avicii appears at his gigs in most of his music videos). The iconography was also very similar to a dance themed music video as we displayed alcohol, party clothing, a DJ, and glow sticks. These all are displayed in the club scene amongst teenagers making it relatable to our target audience resulting in them being more interested. The lighting was all mainly low key with flashing strobe lighting to replicate the club scene. The high key lighting then contrasts with this when the characters wake up to show that they are no longer at the party, representing a good scenario from a bad scenario. This follows the genre as these forms of lighting are often used for certain representations in dance music videos.  Overall, we focused on entertaining the audience as this is a theme that we massively followed from our genre, dance.

 We challenged the conventions of a dance music video by making it mainly a concept video. This is so it would be unique and have more of an impact on the audience. Our concept was that partying shouldn’t take over your life and that family is more important. We also didn’t include much of a performance element as we wanted our fans to get to know the artists more as they are new artists, which relates to Dyers theory. Overall our music video therefore challenges the dance music genre as we have used a concept as the main theme instead of entertaining, which most dance music videos do.