Research for music video

Andrew Goodwin's Theory

Summary of the theory...

Pop videos are built around songs – and often, songs do not pose traditional narrative structures.

The pop video uses the singer as both narrator and character

The singer often looks directly at the camera, trying to involves the viewer at home with the performance

Pop videos are very repetitive

Pop videos have a form of closure and ending. The video must end after a few minutes and this is usually reflected in the video – it builds to a climax or a constant repetition before fading away

Some videos are autonomous from the music they spring from. The visualisation of a song may go beyond the original meaning

Sometimes the video provides a visual pleasure that encourages repeated viewing, this promotes the music.

Sometimes the videos might be promoting other commodities such as films. Therefore, it can be said that there are three types of relations between songs and videos: illustration, amplification and disjuncture.

1)Illustration – the video tells the story of the lyrics. Dance is often used to express the feelings/moods in the song

2)Amplification – when the videos introduce new meanings that do not contradict with the lyrics but add layers of meaning

3)Disjuncture – where there is little connection between the lyric and video or where the video contradicts the lyric. E.g. Michael Jackson’s man in the mirror. This song is about self-realisation but the video is full of radical world events.

Pop videos often have easily recognisable features. Michael used to give a little yelp and/or twirl in his videos

Pop videos represent women as objects of male desire

In some videos, the different instruments are represented by different objects (every time the piano plays, an armadillo is walking by somewhere)

Videos also try and appeal to as wide an audience as possible without alienating the core target audience

Videos that are from songs written for particular movies often incorporate images from that movie in the video (celine deon – my heart will go on)

Examples of Illustration, Amplification and Disjuncture

This video shown above, 'Chris Brown - With You', is a good display of illustration because it shows that Chris is singing about needing to be with his girlfriend, and the video shows him going around his town, on buses, down streets singing about his girlfriend and ignoring other girls that he passes. This shows he is portraying what he is singing about in his song.

This video, 'Angel - Wonderful', is a good example of amplification because the lyrics don't explain the imagery for the entire song but it does for small parts of it; example - when he is singing about something being wonderful, there is an image of a dove flying, moving around etc. Now this implies that Angel is referring to the dove as being something beautiful.

This is a very good definition of disjuncture because in this video, 'Chris Brown - I Should've Kissed You', the whole video shows Chris on a beach, just singing about the woman he should have kissed. It doesn't show us a specific woman he is singing about. There are only a few clips of women dancing but it doesn't fully relate to what the lyrics are saying.