Music Video Theory: Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin, writer of ‘Dancing in The Distraction Factory’ (1992), has conducted years of research on both the music video and the music industry. He proposed 5 key aspects to a music video.

·         ‘Thought Through Beat’

·         Relationship Between Song and Visuals

·         Narrative and Performance

·         Technical Aspect

·         Star Image

 

“Music videos ignore common narrative as they are essentially advertisements. As consumers, we make up our own meaning of a song in our minds: a music video can anchor meaning and gives the record company/artist a method of anchoring meaning.”

Andrew Goodwin.

Relationship Between Song and Visuals

Goodwin proposed that in every music video, there is a relationship between the song lyrics and the images being displayed on screen. He believes that the relationship is one of three types:

·         Amplify – This is also known as repeatability. In this type of video, the images presented are manipulated and shown repeatedly through the music video, drumming it into the audience’s vision.

·         Illustrate – Using the visuals to depict the meaning to the song and ‘bring it to life’. The most common type of relationship between song and visuals.

·         Disjuncture – The meaning of the song is completely ignored and the visuals do not relate to it in any way.

‘Thought Beats’

There are three steps to this process.

The first step is taking into account the musical structure, including the verses and choruses.

The second step is considering the voice of the artist(s). Many artists have a very unique voice. This is often referred to as being a good ‘recording voice’, as people are more likely to identify them when they hear their voice (e.g. on the radio etc.). Therefore, Goodwin believes that the artist’s voice forms an important part of their star image.

This links to Roland Barthes’ theory of the ‘grain of voice’, in which he suggests that the voice is an ‘expressive instrument’. Therefore, he believes we should be able to make associations through the vocal expression.

The third step is to consider the story the artist is telling. In this way, the artist should be viewed as the storyteller and the music video a device to make the story come to life.

 

Narrative and Performance

Andrew Goodwin believes that songs do not give us a complete narrative; they tend to imply that certain things are trying to be said. For this reason, we tend to make up our own ideas of what the song means, and this is often influenced by what the song means to an individual personally. Many times, people can have very different interpretations of a song’s meaning. Therefore, the music video, as a promotional device, should avoid a standard narrative structure.

Music videos should have coherent repeatability, meaning that the audience should be able to watch the video repeatedly without losing interest. Having both a narrative and performance structure helps to hold the audience’s attention.

Goodwin suggests that having the artist themselves as the central ‘character’ and focus of the video is most beneficial to the promotion of the song. He believes this gives the video the most believability, particularly with the emphasis largely on the use of lip-syncing.

Star Image

The artist’s image is extremely important in the making of the music video. The image the artist portrays to the public needs to be consistent, so elements such as costume need to be consistent with previous looks.

Also, the demands of the record label need to be met. Generally, the label will want to see the artist as being the ‘centre of attention’. This will be executed through lots of CUs of the artist’s face, their image or ‘look’ is one of the most identifiable features of the ‘star’. If the artist is relatively new, CUs will be important in making their face known and linking their image/’look’ to their music. As the music video is a promotional video for the song, it is important that the audience can connect the voice of the artist to the face of the artist.

Furthermore, the belief that sexualising the artist, particularly when female, will help to promote the song, is becoming increasingly common in the industry. A very prominent and relatively current example is Miley Cyrus in her videos for Wrecking Ball and Adore You.

In this case, it is true that the controversy created through the sexualisation of Cyrus herself helped to promote the song. In fact, the video was deemed so effective it won Video of The Year at the MTV VMAs 2014.

Another way in which star image is important to the video is through genre characteristics. Music videos often use stereotypes of the musical genre, in terms of both the mise-en-scene (what we see on screen) and the style of music video that has been created. For example, music videos of the rock genre are expected to depict a live performance. The stars themselves and any actors in the video are expected to wear gothic, mainly black clothing. Goodwin believes that music videos do stick to these stereotypes, particularly as these help to advertise the song to a specific audience.
 

Technical Aspect

The technical aspects refers to the way in which the music video was constructed. More specifically, this encompasses the micro-features camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene.