2. Analysis Of Music Videos
• Goodwin identifies 5 main aspects of music
videos that we as the audience should look
out for:
• Narrative and Performance
• Thought beats – Seeing the sound
• The Star Image
• Relations of Visual to song
• Technical Aspects of Music Video
3. Thoughts Beats – Seeing the sound in
your head
• 1st Step – To look at the music and be able to take in account the structure
of the song e.g. chorus/verses
• 2nd – To look at the voice of the song in this case the artists as this is a very
unique and can form identification but also creates a trademark which will
provide the star with a good star image. “The singing voice is an expressive
instrument and makes associations of its own” This is opinion is by Roland
Barthes theory of the Grain of voice.
• 3rd – The artists mode of address is also pointed out by Andrew Goodwin.
As songs are able to create stories and the artist becoming the storyteller
as this is able to create the music video a two communication device,
telling the audience a story and us listening.
4. Narrative & Performance
• “Songs fail to give us the complete narrative”
• With listening to a song we only get a sneak preview of what the
song is actually trying to convey and therefore the audiences make
up their own ideas of what the song is trying to portray.
• Goodwin suggests that narrative is useful for advertising but we
should’t just look at it as common narrative.
• Music videos should coherent repeatability.
• If both narrative and performance are combined in a music video
then it makes it easier for the audience to watch over and over
again without looking interests.
• The artist being both narrator and participant this inscrease the
authenticity. Lip sync and mimed actions remain to be important in
every music video but the audience need to believe this is real.
5. Star Image
• The star image conveys as another vital aspect
of music videos
• Meta Narrative – is a big story that describes
the development of the star over time it also
plays an important role in the music video
production process.
6. Technical Aspects
• This is what holds the music together through the use of
camera work, movement, angle, mise- en scene editing,
sound and special effects.
• Camera – Speed, Camera movement, editing, cutting and
post production.
• To be able to set moods the lightning and color contributes
to this but also emphasize key moments of the song for
dramatic effect.
• The setting of music videos is vital as it needs to look
authentic to attain professionalism.
• To be able to make the music video more entertaining you
need a use of beats and using cuts to go with the beats or
rhythm will be able to make the music video better.
7. Relations of Visual to Song
• There are three ways in which music video work
to promote a song:
• Illustrate – Using a set of images to be able to
illustrate the meaning of the lyrics & genre
• Amplify- Very similar to repeatability. Through
the music video the meanings and effect are
shown through it and drummed into our vision.
• Disjuncture – The meaning of the song is
completely ignored.
