Conventions of Music Videos

In 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' Andrew Goodwin talks about what is conventional of a music video, he talks about how there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals in videos, with the visuals either illustrating or contradicting the lyrics. This statement can be supported by many music video's as evidence of this can be found in almost all of them, but I am going to show an example from Geri Halliwel's 'It's raining men',

In this music video, the line "humidity's rising," the camera literally rises up her body as if it is the humidity.

Similarly to this, Goodwin also says that a relationship exists between the music and the visuals, for example, a dance move can be emphasized in the music video when a distinct drum beat is heard.

Goodwin says that particular music genre's have their own music video style and iconography, this means that rap video's often stereotypically cast attractive women to attract the male gaze and a outfits and mise en scene that look expensive

In the music video for 'Otis' by Kanye West and Jay-Z an expensive car is shown with four girls sitting in the back, however the materialism of this music video is contradicted at the end when a message comes up that tells the audience what the car was made for. This message contradicts the stereotype of the video. 

In the music video to 'monster' by Kanye West, there is a lot of focus on expensive jewellery, his infamous 'diamond' teeth are focused on in a 5 second shot of just his mouth


 
Rock video's generally are more performance based, this is done to show the talent that the artists possess, close ups are used to show the instruments that are being played and the lead singer of the band is often flattered by the camera and features in the video more than the other band mates. However there are also a lot of rock video's that are comical such as Foo Fighters 'Walk,' although this video does still flatter the lead singer and feature a performance section at the end. The lead singer is often flattered by the camera because, according to Goodwin, there is a lot of demand on the part of the record company for a lot of close ups of the main vocalist, this always creates a front man of the band and distinguishes a single member of the band as the most popular, this in turn gives the band a positive stage presence as the audience jump at the chance to see the famous front man in person. However, there are some bands, such as Kasabian, which have established themselves as a band around having two front men, Serge Pizzorno and Tom Meighan.

 
 Country music video's are often American, these videos are often based around a single artist with an acoustic guitar and the scenery features a lot of the stereotypical American countryside - like Texas, this is shown throughout Keith Urban's video to 'Days Go By'






 

According to Goodwin, artists may develop their own star iconography in and out of their music videos which over time becomes part of their star image. A perfect example of this is Lady Gaga, from her first appearance in the music video world she has been seen as unusual. This image has is also stuck to outside of her music video and it is very rare that she is photographed looking 'normal', the most controversial picture that was taken of Gaga was when she was photographed at the 2010 Video Music Awards wearing an outfit that consisted entirely of meat, she later claimed that this was to show the world that "she was not a piece of meat," many artists have followed suit and copied Gaga in the aspect that they want to be viewed by the public as being exceptionally un-ordinary in order to increase their fame, although it can be argued that gaga is no the first unusual artist to break the music scene, with previous female artists such as Bjork and Kate Bush taking the industry by storm with their strange presence. Artists like Nicki Minaj and Azaelia Banks are now put in a similar category to Lady Gaga.



Goodwin argues that there is likely to be reference to voyeurism particularly in the treatment of women, but also in terms of systems of looking. Windows, doors etc give a sense of people watching other people, they can also frame the shot in the video. Similarly to this, location is an important part of the appearance and reputation of an artist, many artists such as Pitbull and Kanye West are very much centred around the Miami/Hollywood reputation

There are key elements of music videos, the first of these are the lyrics, these tend to help establish a general feeling or mood or a sense of subject matter rather than offer a coherent meaning. Key lines may play a part in the visuals in the video, but rarely will a music video simply illustrate a videos wholesale. An example of this is the video for Snow Patrol's video for "open your eyes," this video is simply a car, driving really really fast through a city, you don't see the driver or the car you just see the road ahead. The end of the video shows that he was driving so fast because he wanted to see - what is assumed to be - his girlfriend. 

This shows that the lyrics establish what the music video is going to feature because the video literally doesn't make sense until the last few seconds, the audience then realises that the line "I wont waste a minute without you" is why the car was going so fast.

The second of these key elements is the music, a music video tends to make use of the tempo of the track to drive the editing and may emphasise particular sounds from the track by foregrounding instruments such as guitar, keyboard or drums. This relates to what I was saying earlier in the post, if a distinct sound is heard in the track of the music video, then a particular action will occur in the video that will emphasise that sound.

In the video to 'In the air tonight' by Phil Collins the massively famous drum beat is complimented by a shot in the video that shows a multi-coloured face zoom in and out to the beat of the drums.



Finally, 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' by Andrew Goodwin is generally seen by those who are interested in/study media as offering a deep knowledge of the world of media and it is thought that it offers new insight into the psychological view of television and music videos. I searched the internet for a review of the book and found one that praises the work of Goodwin.