Andrew Goodwin's 6 features of music video's:
In his book Dancing in the Distractions Factory Goodwin established 6 primary features.
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.
This is suggesting that music video's will incorporate various elements that are there simply to establish the genre type of the artist and their music.
When looking at multiple music video's it becomes clear that for different genres there are different signifiers. Examples of this include the large use of gold jewellery in pop video's such as Will.I.Am's "Feeling myself" video.
In addition, and more relevantly to our project, when observing various heavy metal music video's (the genre our group intends to adopt) various signifiers became very clear to us. We have broken these into categories, they consist of the following - Clothing - Instruments - Colour scheme - Mise en scene - We intend to use things from each of these categories in order to better establish our music video into the genre.
Examples of things we saw in these categories are as follows:
- Clothing-
Long dark over coats
Tight black, ripped jeans
Gothic hairstyles ie. long black hair
- Instruments-
Guitars (electric)
Drums
Little to no acoustic
-Colour scheme-
Black
Grey
Mostly just dark!
-Mise en scene-
Chains
Skulls
Crosses
Very gothic with connotations of religion.
2. The lyrics are represented with onscreen images.
This, unlike the first feature, seems less obvious in the music video's that we watched, the basic idea is that as the video will illustrate the lyrics as they are sung. On a basic level, if the artist is singing about a break up, you will be shown an image of a break up on screen.
This is present in a large quantity of music video's and therefore we agree with the feature to some extent, however, this is not a constant law. This is to say, it doesn't always occur.
In our music video we do intend to adopt this feature as we feel it is a safer bet than trying to be overly abstract, trying to force levels of creativity that we don't naturally have seems more damaging than beneficial. Sticking with the feature is not by any means easier, overcompensation or being to literal with the representation can also be highly damaging to the video. this said we have to try and discreetly match the lyrics with the visuals onscreen.
3. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music.
This one I feel is very simple, if the atmosphere of the music is dark and aggressive (much like the music we intend to use) the video must reflect this. If we were to create a bright and happy video for a dark song it would be pointless, even trying to be ironic is dangerous as if this is not clear the video just wont make any sense.
The artist will usually have a rough idea of what they want, knowing what they want to connote helps to develop the video as every detail can be approved before it is compleated. An example of this is Will.I.Am's "This is love" video shoot in which various details are checked several times before being filmed in order to insure that both the artist likes them and that they suit the music.
4. The demands of the record label will include lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop a sort of style that will become individual to them.
Most video's that we have watched demonstrate this very clearly, almost every video will at some stage have a close up of the artist looking dreamingly into the distance. In addition we have noticed that a large amount of artists have a signifier that separates them from other well known artists. This however, is a lot more common for pop artists such as Gaga and her "fashion" or Miley Cyrus's twerking.
It is a lot less common for artists in the heavy metal genre to have a signifier that reoccurs on a frequent enough basis for it to become unique to that individual artist. It is not however unheard of for this to happen for example Motionless in White uses various signifiers that can be seen in the following advert for their new album.
We have for the reasons above, decided that we don't intend to deliberately introduce a different of completely new style instead we are going to tweak the pre existing styles to suit ourselves.
5. There is frequent reference to notions of looking, in particular voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
This feature we feel is aimed at pop music video's, no other genre dictates as much time to showing of the female body. Male artists often use women as objects to signify their dominance, power and respectability. Artists such as Tiny Temper usually have a group of female dancers wearing very little around them, this generates an image of sexual dominance for the artist and portrays them as better or more empowered.
Female artists often project their own bodies in sexual ways, the use of very tight or revealing clothing makes them seem as sexual icons for other women, parading of their well toned an often airbrushed bodies to demonstrate that they are in better physical shape than others.
Basically it is all showing of and we do not feel it is not needed for or piece as it is a lot less common in our genre of music.
6. Often there are inter-textual references to films, tv programs, other music ect...
This feature we do feel is important for our piece as it is often used in our genre of music. As a music video only has a short period of time to convey understanding and meaning to its viewers it will often use pre existing images from past texts to help create a better understanding of what is going on, what is meant and what the message is.
Motionless in White use this feature to help create a dark and gothic atmosphere for their music video's. An example their song "The last snow" connotes ideas from the film edward scissorhands with lyrics like "a man with scissors for hands" ect...
We feel this, when used properly, can be very effective when connoting the idea's we want without having to waste time establishing our themes.
Does it still apply then?
Overall we feel that Goodwin's theory does still apply to music video's as we have found lots of evidence for this, however, we also now see that sometimes avoiding rules and being more abstract when making a music video can be very beneficial.
This was posted by Hayden and Scott.
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