Goodwin’s Theory of Music Videos

Dancing in the Distraction Factory, 1992

Andrew Goodwin identifies 5 key aspects of music videos that we, the audience, should look out for, these are:

- Thought beats – Where you ‘see’ in the sound

- Narrative and Performance

- The Star Image

- Relation of visuals to song

- Technical aspects of a music video

Andrew Goodwin stated that there were three different ways in which the music video can connect back to the song itself. These are:

-Illustration

-Amplification

-Disjuncture

Illustration

In an illustration music video, it should always cut on the beat. This is to make the viewer feel the music and keep up with the song.

The video will show the meaning of the lyrics, whether that being literally or the feelings portrayed by the lyrics
FOR EXAMPLE:

This video produced by Oasis is an example of an Illustrated music video because of its use of cuts. The majority of the transitions made in this video occur on the beat itself in order to create a feel for the music which is suggested by a video in this category. From the video we can see the cuts being done quickly from the performance to part of what seems to be a narrative structure on the important beats of the lyrics.

Amplification

Most of the time will cut on the beat, however, sometimes will cut off the beat. The purpose of this is to 'amplify' the song and the narrative, which keeps the audience entertained

Images we see should show what the lyrics mean. Sometimes the video won’t match the song completely but will match the context in some way

The artist will most likely dress up as the character who feature in the narrative of the video. They will still be recognised but also helps us understand the narrative slightly more.
FOR EXAMPLE:

This music video of Coldplay with their song 'Hymn for the Weekend' features the lead singer who is usually in the centre frame of each shot, including the performance shots. We see him embarking on a sort of 'adventure'. This music video is an example of an amplified video due to the cuts of several frames not being exactly on beat. However, the video itself does not really match the lyrics as the lyrics suggest a lot about ‘drinking’ and ‘love’ and the video expresses a more exploring and a journey sort of vibe. But the video could be suggested that it does match with the lyrics as his is talking about someone in his lyrics and from the use of head and shoulder shots we can identify that he may be thinking/dreaming about that person whilst venturing throughout the video.

Disjuncture

This is more for dance music as we don’t focus on the narrative

Images don’t match most of the time and the narrative does not relate to the song. Established artist are more inclined to do this as the audiences already know what they look like and the genre in which they fit into.

The artist or band will look nothing like they usually do, sometimes the complete opposite, rarely they won’t even feature in their own music videos

FOR EXAMPLE:

Within this uniquely styled video a great deal of CGI is used in order to create a series of monkey’s dancing. This example fits nicely into the disjuncture category of music videos as the video does not show a match to the lyrics or feature the band at all in the shots due to it being consumed by the use of animation.

How is this useful?

• This research is extremely useful when it comes to producing my digipak as it gives me an idea of the range of different structures of a music video
• Enables me to see that within my chosen genre there are many routes I could take
• Understanding these different categories gives me the opportunity to experiment with the structure of my video.