Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin identifies the 5 key aspects of music videos that we as an audience should look out for. These are:

• Thought beats- seeing the sound

The structure of the song and how it effects what happens in the music video, for example the change between the verse and chorus.

The voice of the song, the artists voice is extremely unique and can form identification or trademarks to that particular artist or record label.

The mode of address Andrew points out how music videos can tell a story and that the artist is the storyteller, making the music video a communication device to help tell the story.

• Narrative and Performance

Songs don't usually give us the whole story and we only tend to get the gist of the meaning and we interpret it in our own ways and make our own ideas. Goodwin explains that music videos should avoid common narrative and aim to create something different to make it stand out for advertising purposes

He says that the narrative and performance aspects of the video should work together to compliment each other and cut between them constantly to make the video easy to watch over and over without the audience getting too bored.

The artist acting as both a narrator and participant in the story helps to make it more realistic and believable, though the lip syncing has a huge impact seeing as the audience has to believe its real to make them interested in the story line.

• Star Image

The artists image is a vital aspect in a music video, artists want to look unique in order to stay current and be remembered.

All artists have their own 'star image', which is their characteristics and style which make them recognizable and iconic, here are a few examples:

Take that: popular British boy band who's music and looks always grab attention. there style has always been in fashion throughout the ages.

Taylor swift: in all performances she is smiling, happy and has an overall happy look which can be contrasted by the lyrics in some of her songs

• Relating the visuals to the song

Music videos work in 3 different ways to promote the song:

Illustrate- the images are directly related to the lyrics, using a set of images to illustrate and highlight the meaning of the lyrics

Amplify- the meanings of the lyrics are manipulated and constantly shown throughout the video to make us remember them

Disjuncture- where the meaning of the song is completely ignored

• Technical Aspects

the technical aspects such as the camera angles and movement, mise-en-scene, added sound, editing and special effects create and hold the music video together. They help to improve and highlight all of the points above, by cutting between shots in time with the beat of the song, using lighting to set moods and close ups to highlight the artists style or emotion.