Dance Music Video Analysis - Forms and Conventions

‘Animals’ by Dutch DJ Martin Garrix was one of the songs of summer 2013 and the song broke a 17 year old in to the mainstream on the back of multiple toppings of charts across Europe. Despite being signed to one of the largest dance music record labels in Spinnin' Records, the video does not appear to have been particularly high budget but yet demonstrates many of the conventions expected of a dance music video. The video sees a group of skilled dancers wearing animal masks, relevant to the name of the track, leave for a club. On the way they cause havoc, throwing bins over and performing quite ridiculous stunts. Another dance video featuring a masked group of dancers, reinforcing the conventions of this style of music and video, is Nicky Romero - Toulouse. My idea for a music video would be to create a video in a similar style to that of the two aforementioned for the song ‘Tsunami’ by DVBBS & Bourgeous. All three songs I have mentioned were released on the Dutch label Spinnin’ Records and therefore similarities in styles of video are not surprising. Coincidentally, all three DJs are Dutch. Firstly, in the video for ‘Animals’ the opening shot shows a relatively plain background, in this case the ground, with the superimposition of the name of the artist and then the name of the song flashing up on the screen. This is a regular feature of Spinnin’ Records videos as we can see this edit occur in the other two Spinnin’ Records videos. This is likely to be down to the genre, as in general most dance songs will not feature many lyrics and therefore it is important that the video gives the song an identity, which is exactly what the bold, contrasting superimpositions do. Said background appears to be plain but a lit match dropped on to the shot lights up what appears to be a pavement in flames. Fire seems to be a common occurrence in dance music videos, as fire jugglers are a key element of the video for ‘Tsunami’. Looking at another EDM music video from a different label, Universal Music Recordings, Avicii’s ‘I Could Be The One’, which incidentally was made with Romero, also features fire in the party scenes. Therefore we could assume that fire is a convention. Reverting back to the video for ‘Animals’ and we can see the use of props come in to fruition. One of the models carries a clock under his arm, which is intertwined with the fact that the song features a sound very much clock-like. This is a demonstration of how dance music videos can and do compensate for a lack of lyrics. Both ‘Animals’ and ‘Toulouse’ base the story of the video around masked characters, which, while in keeping with the mystery of dance videos, creates an identity for the video as a whole. In a similar way we see the actors in the video for ‘Tsunami’ dressed in an almost navy-style outfit, relating to the title, and also creating an overall identity for the song. This in turn could be extremely useful to bear in mind when producing a digipak, album cover and promotional package. It also noticeable that in all four videos I have mentioned there does seem to be a common theme of intimidating behaviour. In ‘Animals’ the dancers are aggressive, throwing bins on the floor, smashing a car up and then setting it alight. In ‘Toulouse’, the dancers almost attack the pedestrians they come across and their behaviour overall does not conform to the norm. In ‘Tsunami’ there is a motorbike which is being revved up in a provocative style. There is also evidence of aggressive behaviour in ‘I Could Be The One’, with the lead actress throwing office equipment around rather excessively.