"(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar" is a 2009

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetiti ...

created and performed by the cast of the

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single in ...

'' The Guild'', with lead vocals by

singer Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

Felicia Day Kathryn Felicia Day (born June 28, 1979) is an American actress, writer, and web series creator. She is the creator and star of the web series '' The Guild'' (2007–2013), a show loosely based on her life as a gamer. She also wrote and starred ...

. The lyrics were written by Day and the music was written by musical composer

Jed Whedon Jed Tucker Whedon (born July 18, 1975) is an American screenwriter and musician, and the son of screenwriter Tom Whedon, grandson of screenwriter John Whedon, and the brother of screenwriter Zack Whedon and of filmmaker Joss Whedon. Career Al ...

, who also directed the music video.

Background

When interviewed at

San Diego Comic-Con San Diego Comic-Con International is a comic book convention and nonprofit multi-genre entertainment event held annually in San Diego, California since 1970. The name, as given on its website, is Comic-Con International: San Diego; but it is ...

, Day attributed her inspiration for the song to 1980s and 1990s-style

dance music Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded da ...

. She conveyed an obsession with Stacey Q's " Two of Hearts" in particular, which is apparent with Day including a familiar ''"come on, come on"'' in the lyrics. The song includes a

rap Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The ...

portion performed by ''Guild'' co-stars Jeff Lewis and

Sandeep Parikh Sandeep Parikh (; born July 23, 1980) is an American writer, director, actor and producer of comedy. He is best known for his co-starring role as Zaboo on the award-winning web series '' The Guild''. He is the founder of Effin Funny Productions, ...

. While Day composed the lyrics herself, whilst listening to "really bad 1990s dance songs", she turned to screenwriter

(with whom she had worked on internet musical '' Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog'' and TV series ''

Dollhouse A dollhouse or doll's house is a toy home made in miniature. Since the early 20th century dollhouses have primarily been the domain of children, but their collection and crafting is also a hobby for many adults. English-speakers in North America ...

'') to compose the music. Whedon and his wife

Maurissa Tancharoen Maurissa Tancharoen () in Los Angeles, California)Maurissa Tancharoen
biographical inf ...

are credited as backup singers on the video, and Tancharoen also contributes her talent as a back-up dancer; this was the first time Whedon (who also directed the video) had seen her dance.

Music video

The music video features the entire cast of ''The Guild'' dressed up as their own online "

avatar Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appear ...

" characters from the web series. Day comments that "In a regular Hollywood situation it would have cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars", but the video was recorded in Whedon's closet three weeks prior to its general release. Whedon stated that in directing the video (his first time "directing anything" according to his wife) he "basically wanted to do a relatively cliché dance video as if it were about medieval fantasy warriors who took themselves really seriously," in which respect he felt the cast delivered "perfectly and hilariously". He used

stop motion Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...

techniques to compensate for those members of ''The Guild'' cast who do not have dancing skills. Then, to make it "legit" as a video, Whedon made sure to include "actual sexy footage of Felicia, stellar dancing with Amy kudashowing off her chops, and of course, raining money." Jeff Lewis describes himself as "not good at anything at all - dancing or rap" and comments, "they were able to make what I did he rap sequencefairly entertaining". Lewis recorded four lines of rap at Jed's house which were later synced up to the video. He was told to dance or "do anything" for three minutes, which "felt really bad and embarrassing... awful" but was impressed when the footage was slowed down, and became "more than I anticipated or imagined in a music video."

Reception

The video reached 1 million

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

hits in less than 2 days. By April 2012–33 months after release—the YouTube video had 19,710,073 hits, averaging around 600,000 hits a month. On August 6, 2010 the song became a playable track on '' Rock Band 2'' via the

Rock Band Network The ''Rock Band'' Network (abbreviated RBN) was a downloadable content service designed by Harmonix with the help of Microsoft to allow musical artists and record labels to make their music available as playable tracks for the ''Rock Band'' seri ...

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

Background

Music video

Reception

References

External links