Andrew Goodwin

His book dancing in the distraction factory Andrew Goodwin points out characteristics and features that can be found in music videos

1.       Music videos generate genre characteristics (Stage performance in metal bands, Dance routine for a girl/boy band, aspiration in hip hop)  

2.       There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals, The lyrics are represented with images (either illustrative, amplifying or contradiction)

3.       There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music (either illustrative, amplifying or contradiction)

4.       The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (A visual style)

5.       There is frequently reference to notion of looking. (Screens within screens, mirrors, stages, etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body

6.       There are often intertextual references (to films, TV programmes, other music video etc.)

How to analyse music videos:

  Though beats –

-Where you ‘see’ in the sound (Looking at the music itself, what the song is saying to you and the way in which the artist addresses it)

2 Narrative and performance –

-Songs fail to give us the complete narratives, sometimes it is left for the audience to fill in the dots.

-Makes it easy for the audience to watch but without losing interest.

- Performance of the artist completes authenticity, people know it’s legitimate.

3.The star image-

-Meta narrative (which is a big story that describes the development of the star over time) has an important part to play in the music video production process

4.       Relations of visuals to song

- illustrate: music videos can use a set of images to illustrate the meaning of lyrics and genre, this is the most common.

-Disjuncture: the meaning of the song is completely ignored.

- Amplify: this is similar to repeatability. Meanings and effects are manipulated and constantly shown through the video and drummed into our vision

  Technical aspects of music videos –

- Hold the music video through the use of camera work, movement, angle, mise en scene, editing, sound and special effects.

 -Speed, camera movement, editing, post production.

- Lighting and colour, sets the mood and emphasises key movements of the song, mise en scene (setting of the music video is vital, it needs to look authentic to attain professionalism) -Beats (music videos use cuts to go with the beat or rhythm making the video more entertaining.)

Choosing an artist

I had to be very carfeul when selecting the song which i wanted to make my own music video for. I wanted to be sure it was a song i liked, due to the fact that i would be spending vast amounts of time on i felt if i didnt like the song it would become very boring and tedious. So this was an important factor of song choice for me. I also wanted to choose a song which had meaningful lyrics, i felt that this would help me create a better image in my head of the music video and help me to get my points across in the video. I also wanted to choose a song which I think people had more of a story to it so that i could use the narrative and performance type of music videos, as In my eyes these are the easiest type of videos to watch. I believe they are the more interesting as the viewer can then have a story to relate the music video to.
Personally, i listen to a wide variety of music so i wanted to narrow this down by the type of music which i thought could have a good story line to it. I  thought i would struggle getting a good story line to Hip Hop or R&B due to the nature of the songs and i wouldnt know how to portray this or be able to get the correct Mise en scene for these music videos so i had to cancel these genres out of the equation.
I then thought that pop could be good, but i then decided that doing a narrative to this could very easily become cringey to watch and could easily look very childish and unproffesional. I also didnt want to do a video on a typical boy meets girl pop video as i thought it could be boring and wouldnt stand out.
So with realising the idea of pop had potential i decided to look for a band which had been in the charts frequently but didnt come under the gendre of pop, i then came across the band 'The Fray' who have been largely successful in the charts but still hold there own genre of 'Light Rock' I then went on to discover the song of 'How to save a life' This song seemed to tick all of the boxes in what i was looking for and i was then happy to go forward with it.

Music Video Theories

At the start of the academic year we learnt the three main theories that are applied to Music videos and throughout this post I will be talking through each of the theories. These are, Narritive, Conceptual and Performance

Narrative
Narritive music videos are ones which tend to tell a story of some sort. The story line is shown throughout the music video, it is not always directly involved with the band but the lyrics in the song usually back up the footage which the video is showing. Narrative music videos are usually shown in the genre of 'Pop' Music videos. I suspect this is due to the more emotional and slow beat songs which come under this Genre, also the audience which this genre is appealing to. Typically this being a teenage girl which has the largest market in music videos as they are the people viewing them, this type of music video is very appealing to this target market. A good example of a narrative music video is


Conceptual 
Another type of music video's is the conceptual music video. Conceptual music videos are completely unique and full of randoms images and videos. Conceptual vidoes are usually based around one idea and throughout the music video this concept/idea is expanded. These music videos can completley range in price, they can be really cheap to make by just using random shots or they can be very expensive due to the amount of after effects and editing that is put into this. As the videos are usually so random they are very difficult to make successfully as the audience usually finds the videos difficult to relate to. An example of a conceptual music video is 'Strawberry Swing by Coldplay'

Performance
Finally, we have performance music videos. These videos are simply the band performing sining the song, these can very in location due to the genre of the song. For instance some music videos consist of the band performing at a 'gig' where as some bands take the approach of performing in more obscure locations, such as U2's song 'Vertigo' where they are performing in the middle of nowhere. Performance music videos consist of a lot of different shots, the reasoning for this being to keep the movie exciting. If there was a lack of shots in a performance video you can imagine how the video could quickly become abit boring. An example of a good performance music video would be 'The pretender' by the Foo Fighters. Although this is filmed in a boring white room, the shots and intensity of the music video keeps it very interesting.

Clipping masks

Clipping mask's are a good way of keeping CD covers to look interesting and also to get the initial attention of potential customers. below is a good example of this 

I here have used a clipping mask of the new york skyline and the 'stussy' clothing brand and used a clipping mask to create this image. i believe it makes the image stand out to an ordinary brand logo and we could also use this on a cd cover with a band to make it look more interesting. This could also help to appeal to a new audience 

Rotoscope

we have been doing some work on CD covers in preparation for our coursework.
During this we learnt how to 'Rotoscope' this is where you get an image and then in essence sketch over the picture to give it a more cartoon effect and make the image look a bit more artistic. For this i used a picture  of Gareth Bale a world famous footballer. I chose this picture as i thought it would be challenging enough yet realistic for my abilities.

Below is my 'Rotoscope' version of the image 

As we can see the image is given a cartoon feel to it. I was quite pleased with the eventual result of the image.