Andrew Goodwins music video theory

Andrew Goodwin identifies 5 key aspects of music videos that we, the audience, should look out for;
- 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

‘Thought Beats – ‘Seeing’ the sound
1. To look at the music - take into account the structure of the song.

2. The voice of the song. The artists voice is unique and can form identification to work well with the star image.
(Roland Barthes theory of the Grain of voice can be related to this. He sees the singing voice as an expressive instrument and therefore able to make associations of its own.)

3. Goodwin points out the artists mode of address. Songs can be seen as stories and the artist the storyteller, them telling us a story and us listening- making the music video a two communication device.

Relationship between the music and visuals

There are three ways visuals are used to promote a song- (technical codes)

* Illustrate- certain image and shots are used to explain the meaning behind the lyrics of the song.- artist cross cut with narrative. (Most popular) 

* Disjuncture- the meaning of the song is completely ignored by the music video


* Amplify- images and camera shots are manipulated and shown repeatedly during the music video (repeatability). May not necessarily tell a story.

Strong relationship between song and visual, this is because the audience can then relate to the artist. 

Technical- Close ups used for visual style. 

Artists have a repeated motifs in their music videos so that they have a star image. (Richard Dyer also says)- gets message across and sticks in the audiences head. Getting this connection is important so that audiences start to follow them. 

Intertextuality- icon references- nothing is now and the audience benefits from this as they get more of an understanding behind the music video.