2. How to analyse music videos
• Andrew Goodwin identifies 5 key areas of
music videos which we the audience should
note when watching. These are:
• Thought beats-seeing the sound
• narrative and performance
• The star image
• Relation of visuals to song
• Technical aspect of music video
3. Thought beats seeing the sound in
your head
• First thing you should look at is the music itself. You must take
into account the structure of the song. E.g. how any verses are
there? How many times the chorus is repeated.
• Secondly, the voice of the song. This is the artists voice, their
can form an identification or trademark that works well with
the star image.
• Thirdly, Goodwin points out the artists mode of address.
Songs can be conceived as stories and artists as storytellers.
Making the music video a two way communication device,
them telling us a story and us listening.
4. Narrative and performance
• Songs fail to give use the complete narrative, we only get a
small part of the song’s meaning and then we make up our
own idea of what the song is about.
• Goodwin explains that music videos should ignore common
narrative. It is important in their role of advertising.
• Narrative and performance work hand in hand making it
easier for audience to watch over and over without losing
interest.
• The artist acting as both the narrator and the participant
helps to increase the authenticity however the lip sync and
other mimed actions remains the heart of the music video.
The audience need to believe this is real.
5. Star image
• The star image is another important aspect of
music videos. the more well know bands or
artists tend to perform more in their music
videos to show how important they are.
6. Relation of visuals to song
• There are three ways I which music videos work
to promote a song. These are:
• Illustrate-music can be a set of still frames to
illustrate the lyric’s meaning and genre, this is the
most common.
• Amplify-this is similar to repetition. Meanings
and effect are constantly shown through the
video and drummed in to our vision.
• Disjunction- this is where the message of
meaning is completely left out of the video.
7. Technical Aspects
• Technical aspects hold the music video together
through use of camera work, movement, angle, mise-
en-scene editing, sound and special effects.
• Speed, camera movement, editing, cutting and post
production are all forms of camera.
• Lighting and colour help set moods and emphasise key
moments of the song for dramatic effect.
• Mise-en-scene, the setting of music videos is vital, it
needs to look authentic to attain professionalism.
• Beats, music videos use cuts to go with the beat and
rhythm making the video more entertaining.
