Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin says that there are 5 key aspects of a music video that audiences look for. These are thought beats, narrative, star image, relation to visuals, and technical aspects.

Thought beats involves the moving image in the music video expanding on your thoughts and interpretations of the lyrics alone. This explains why in the questionnaire the audiences may have favoured wanting the storyline of the video to work alongside the lyrics instead of contrasting them.

Narrative involves performance and the main aim of this is to keep the audience interested in the music video to prevent them from being bored by it. The narrative and performance have to work together to do this. Miming makes the video more realistic and original, and Goodwin said that a music video is most effective when the artist stars in the music video as the actor/singer as well as the participant. The miming needs to look as real as possible and this aspect links to our questionnaire and supports the fact the target audience wanted to see the artist miming. However, our findings also contrast the aspect of performance as the target audience did not want to see instruments being played.

Star image is the idea that the artist is the vital aspect of the music video. Therefore they have to look unique and be easily distinguished from other artists.

The next aspect is relation of  visuals to the song. This is where the meaning of the song is not considered when creating the music video. This doesn’t apply to our music video as we are working the lyrics and their meanings alongside the music video.

The last aspect of Goodwin’s music video theory is the technical aspects of the music video. These hold the music together and include:

-       Camerawork

-       Movement

-       Angle

-       Mise-en-scene

-       Editing

-       Sound

-       Special Effects

All of these aspects will contribute to communicating a specific mood and feel to the music video. They can help communicate key themes and even emotions of the characters and also they can emphasise or introduce new aspects to the storyline. The mise-en-scene is really important to us as when creating our music video it needs to look as realistic and natural as possible. The camerawork and editing need to work alongside the beat of the song, i.e. rapid cutting when the song is upbeat. This all needs to be considered in planning.