Goodwin's theory and our music video project

Goodwin’s theory of music videos consists of 6 steps or categories to analyse music videos; these are:

1) Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics- stage performance.
2) There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals- illustrative, amplifying or contradicting.
3) There is a relationship between music and visuals- illustrative, amplifying or contradicting.
4) The demands of the record label- close ups of artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work.

5) There is frequently reference to notion of looking and female body.

6) There are often intertextual reference- films, TV programmes or other music videos

Our music video has some of these categories in it, so we can use Goodwin’s theory to analyse it.

Music videos demonstrating genre characteristics.

In our music video we had a little bit of performance, with a female lip-syncing in the studio. We did this to break up the narrative and link the next scenes together so it was smooth and all the sequences flowed. We didn’t have a dance routine or much other performance as the genre we were doing don’t have it; we found when researching the ‘dubstep’ music videos didn’t show singing apart from if they were doing a concert and it showed the audience and them performing on stage, however, we couldn’t create this atmosphere as it would cost too much and probably take too much time and so wouldn’t be finished in time. Most of the videos in this genre are narrative, the Nero video was all story so originally we wanted to have a full narrative piece but as the project went on we decided to have some performance in our video.

Relationship between lyrics and visuals.

Our lyrics were about waiting for someone and disappointment; our visuals related to the lyrics sometimes but we used the original video for this song to give us prompts on our video. The Chase and Status one had a girl having to deal with her mum and dad’s fights and abuse and how she was dealing with it, we didn’t copy their video but used an angry, young couple who go through bad times in their relationship but we reflected on their happy moments as well. The lyrics and the title of the song ‘Time’ so we had some references to time for example, a clock and waiting at a bus stop; in editing we sped up these two clips to show how much time the male has waited, thought or remembered about his relationship.

Relationship between music and visuals.

In our video the visuals go with the music very well; the cuts are on the beats and the bigger or louder parts of the song match with the action we have on screen. Each time the music builds, the video is of the clips that have been sped up, this emphasizes on the music and how fast the male’s time is going. Another part in the music is at 2:24 where the music goes quieter and less instruments and noise is going on also Delilah’s voice softens and the notes she sings lengthen; so we have placed a clip of the couple on a rooftop with the sunlight shining through the gaps when their talking, this makes them into silhouettes. This looks really pretty and it matches the music as it creates a happy atmosphere and makes the whole shot and video look like the couple are in love, we didn’t need to put a filter on this shot as the sunlight made the clip have shades of yellow and oranges like the sunset which is natural and obviously not artificial also it goes with the music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9jeU76Y9E&ob=av2n : and go to 2:24 to listen to the musical change we mean.

The demands of record labels.

Goodwin said that for audiences to recognise the main person or artist they camera angles have to be close ups of the character to distinguish them from any other actor in the video, this makes the viewers recognise them and remember them. Taking this into account we shot the lip-syncing clips with a close up of the female artist and then a faded shot of a mid shot next to it whilst we filmed it using two different cameras at the same time instead of editing it that way after. Also because there’s a male character who tells his story, we used close ups of him as well to show his reactions to things, his emotions and try to put across what he could be thinking.

The notion of looking and female body.

There is some sense of looking in our video, in a way that the male is looking for his life to make sense as everything seem to be going wrong with his girlfriend. At one point he’s looking over the edge of a wall before he jumps so he is looking for reasons and also looking over the edge. Another time he is looking at another female, that’s why his girlfriend started shouting at him. This also links to the part that Goodwin says about the female body, the character obviously saw another girl attractive and this is what Goodwin is talking about, that men see women as sexual figures; even though we didn’t show girls in short dresses and dressed provocatively like artists have in their music videos.

Intertextual references.

Intertextual references mean; in a music video the story line is similar or copying a famous story or another music video. For example, Madonna’s video ‘Material girl’ is similar to ‘Gentlemen prefer blondes’. Our music video doesn’t really do this, apart from maybe a slight similarity to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because the girl dies so he kills himself, even though he mistakenly kills her. This is the only reference to anything else. We could have maybe done more using this technique but then we would have taken someone else’s ideas and not expanded on our ideas.

By Sam