AS1: Task 2 - Understand the styles and conventions of music videos

Understand the styles and conventions of music videos

Andrew Goodwin:

Music theorist Andrew Goodwin, wrote a book in 1992 called 'Dancing in the distraction factory'.  Andrew Goodwin  has six conventions key conventions such as the different forms of music video.

1) Genre Characteristics: This is where the different genres of music use different key conventions in their videos. For example, in "Rihanna - We found Love" Rihanna's genre is partly Pop and Dance which is this song's genre too. So there is a link between the music and the visual.

  

A) Another example is a girl band 'Girls Aloud'. Here are six screen grab images from their music video 'Can't Speak French' and some screen shots form their other videos to show how their style compared to The Foo Fighters is different. As you can see the major difference between both genres is the way how they dress and the way how the video is presented. In every music video Girls Aloud they are all wearing matching dresses and do a lot of dance routines as it is the most common thing to do in a girl band.

 

B) However, The Foo Fighters stick to playing their guitars, drums and their singing. As their genre is Rock their videos are very fast paced and dark too, so even though they are both bands their conventions are different. In their music video 'The Pretender', I have taken some screen shots from it to show this. I have also taken some shots of their other videos to display the different kind of conventions these two genres have.

2) Relation of lyrics/music to the visuals: This is usually where the name of the music video is used in the lyrics. For instance a great example of this is Rihanna - Shut up and Drive, and the main lyrics of the song is 'shut up and drive'. In the video there are also cars surrounded by her and the people in the video.



3)  Relationship between music and visuals: The relationship between the music and visuals is where the video is effected by the style and tempo of the music. In Beyonce - Halo, her video contains lighting that is very soft and looks very white so it can match with a heavenly look as the name of the song is named 'Halo'. Also the camera shots are very slow and gentle as well.




4) Develop a style: Andrew Goodwin's fourth convention is usually the record label demanding close ups of the artist as they are trying to promote them. These close ups are used to create a visual style / image. Lady Gaga for instance always has close camera shots because her work wear is the centre of attention throughout her work. Another example is Katy Perry as she is very extravagant with how she presents herself and her videos.

 

[Here are some screen shots from Katy Perry's video E.T]

                                      

5) Frequent of motion and looking: In a music video everything will be angled towards the artist normally drawing their eyes. The artist will usually wear costumes that'll attract the audience mainly because the whole idea for it is to create sex appeal. A good example of this is Nicki Minaj - Starships. In the video she wears outfits that exposes a lot of her body as she purposely wants the visuals to notice it and have mixed emotions about it.

6) Intertextual references: This is the final convention which states that the music video will include media products such as film, or music videos such as Tv programmes. In Eminem's ' 'Guess who's back' he has various interpretations of Elvis and BinLadin. His videos were comedy based and so when he interpretated these two individuals, he turned something very factual and serious into a fun joke which was entertaining for the public and probably still is.