T2-Understand the styles and conventions of music videos, Part 1- Andrew goodwin's 6 music video conventions

Understanding the styles and conventions of music videos

Andrew Goodwin's book "Dancing in the Distribution Factory(1992)" gave information on many different conventions and similaritys though music videos. 6 of these conventions are;

1. The book highlights the conventions that are used for nearly all music videos such as specific genres using nearly the same characteristics as eachother.

• For example Girl bands usually have a lot of closeup/mid shots with constant eye contact, lots of suggestive touching throughout the video as well as a lot of dancing in formation. as seen below in 'Girls Aloud - Biology' and 'The Saturdays- What About Us' respectively.

• Rock bands on the other hand have Very little movement apart from the main singer and are usually set in big empty areas with the instruments and band playing. as seen below in 'Foo Fighters- The Pretender' and 'Green Day- American Idiot' respectively.

• Indie Folk tends to have more natural settings in fields, parks and forests with usually the band playing with more acoustic instruments and walking around. as seen below in 'Mumford & Sons - Hopeless Wanderer' and 'The Paper Kites - Bloom' respectively

• Boy bands have generally the same characteristics as girl bands with constant eye contact at short to mid shots. as seen below in 'Westlife- I Have a Dream' and 'Take That - back For Good' respectively.

2. The book also points out the fact that there is either one of 3 types of music videos for songs;

Illustrative

• This type of music video literaly illustratrates the lyrics to the song with no deviating from the face meaning

 

Amplifying

•  Amplifying music videos take the lyrics and accent on it to give them more meaning than they have on face value.

Contradicting

• Contradicting music videos make no link to the lyrics of the actual song and are in no way related.

3. Another point is that there is a relationship between the music and visuals in the sense that the tone and atmosphere of the visuals is either Amplifying, Contradictive or illustrative in relation to the music.
These type of music videos match the tone and theme of the music in a exact or similar way.

"Pharrell Williams - happy" has a slow beat in which the music video illustrates the tone by matching the beat in cuts and pace.

"Skrillex-Bangarang" has a fast beat which the music video amplifies the tone by cuts to the beat and fast cuts and the setting being a robbery of a ice cream van which in itself is fast paced.

4. another of goodwins's points is that the record labels demand a artist to come up with a visual style.

A example of this point is lady Gaga who from her first song has built a image of having strange  and surreal music videos and also dresses and acts strangely in all of her public appearances.



5. The cameras in music videos have a constant sense of observing the subject especially women in a voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

Using this form of music video makes use of women as a tool to draw in male audiences a example of such is Britney Spears - Toxic.




6. Music videos often use interexual references of other media such as Tv programs, other music videos, news at the time and films. 

This can be done for a number of reasons such as having a promotion deal to promote different the media and linking the music video to the other media to promote themselves and gain a bigger audience. a example of this is daft punk punk making songs for the film Tron Legacy as well as making a music video for one of them in the style of the film as shown in Daft punk - Derezzed.