Goodwins Theory

Goodwin identified 5 key aspects of music videos that we can look out for:

• There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.
• There is a relationship between music and visuals.
• The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work.
• There is frequently reference the notion of looking and particularly the voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
• This is often intertextual reference to: Films, TV other forms of media.

Goodwin states that music videos are a form of advertisment and so shouldnt have too big or dominant a narrative. They should also be repetative and easy for the audience to be entertained without loosing intrest on multiple viewings. Increasing the entertainment of the video can also be achieved by a very good lip sync, as it allows the audience to concieve it as a reality. The image of the band/soloist has to stick, and throughout their musical time period has to get progressivly more popular and universalised. During the production of music videos there are three key points when looking at the relationship between the video and the song. These are:

• Illustrate - The visuals represent the context of the lyrics and genre, this is the most common type of visual relation. Can be expressed and shown using mis en scene and camera shots.
• Amplify - The visuals have some context within the video, however it consists of repetative manipulative shots to get the video to stick in peoples heads, this relation is mostly associated with advertisements as it becomes clear the narrative is mostly ignored. These shots usually use close ups of the performer, to make people remember them.
• Disjuncture - The meaning of the songs lyrics/narration have no relevance to the video, an example of a video like this would be FatBoySlim's "Weapon of Choice" which involves Christopher Walken dancing around to the tune of the song in a hotel lobby.