Andrew Goodwin's Theory
Andrew Goodwin was a director of music and organist at Bangor Cathedral for 37 years. He wrote a book, he developed a sense for what makes a good music video. During this time period, he wrote a book called 'Dancing in the Distraction factory' in the year of 1992. In this book he expressed what he thought made a good music video.
Andrew Goodwin put music videos into 4 categories:
Type of video | Description of video | Example |
Performance | Videos in which the artist lip syncs to the audio track. | |
Narrative | A video which tells the story of the song, this may include some miming from artist. | |
Conceptual | This video tells an artist’s interpretation of the song, not a literal story. | |
Hybrid | This final type of video combines two or more music video styles. |
These are the things that Goodwin pointed out should make a good music video:
1) Music video should demonstrate genre characteristics, so basically a music video should represent the genre of the music. For example, in a performance heavy metal video, band members might smash guitars etc.
2) A relationship between lyrics and visuals is common. These can be in 3 different categories:
- Illustrative - Mirrors the exactly story of lyrics
- Amplifying - Over exaggerates the lyrics
- Contradicting - Complete opposite of what the lyrics are saying
3) A relationship between music and visuals.
4) The record label might demand that there are lots of close ups of badges and things like this, to develop the brand.
5) Frequent reference to the notion of looking, like screens within screens and telescoped. Often there is a voyeuristic treatment of one's body, which attracts opposite gender audience.
6) There is often an inter-textual reference to things such as films and tv programs, which increases viewings.
After looking at Andrew Goodwin's theory, I am now going to deconstruct two indie music videos with reference to the theory.
Deconstruction of 'Bloc Party - I Still Remember'
Above is the video for this deconstruction, where the lead singer of Bloc Party walks through a train singing about remembering old times. The music video for this indie rock song falls into Goodwin's category of hybrid. While being mostly performance, there are elements of conceptual. The elements of it being a conceptual music video come from the fact the the song has little to do with someone walking through a train, but this is how Bloc Party have interpreted the song.
When the music video begins with a backwards zoom entering into a moving train, the genre characteristics are hinted at but not immediately evident. You can tell this song might be indie rock because of the home grown camera effect on the video, which makes it slightly grey. In the first carriageway of the train, there is a ticket man on board, on an empty carriageway. This has little relationship to the music at the time, which shows the music video is likely to have conceptual aspects. The train itself is an old train that looks like it needs some maintenance, throughout the video this relates to the main lyrics 'I still remember' as the song is about remembering old times and the train is old. In the next carriageway the lead singer comes into the frame. Around him on the train are his other band members sitting on the seats with their instruments. The notion of looking is only being used by the main singer, as he is staring down the main camera the whole time. This technique makes the viewer only really see the main singer, and they perhaps might not notice people around him. This stamps branding on the video as the lead singer is the one that most people recognise from the band.
As the song progresses it continues to move through carriageways on the train. You can see each carriageway is a different one, because on the doors different numbers are displayed each time. On these carriageways are the same people sat down every time, progressively talking to each other more and getting on better. A visual link between lyrics and video is hard to pick out on a conceptual song, but I think the link is that the lyrics at the time are singing about the development of his relationship with a girl. So, on each train the people's relationships developing links to the lyrics. Eventually after many carriageways, we come to going through carriageways of the whole band standing and performing the song. I think this is here at this point as the brand has been stamped down on the song by now. This performance shows a link between the music and video as the band are playing the music in the video that is on the audio.
Next, the song comes out of the train for the first time. It shows the train from the outside travelling on its rail before progressing through lots of different train windows. On every train are still the lead singer and the same people having fun. Shortly following this there is the first real obvious link between song lyrics and the video. As the lyrics say 'we wrote our names on every train' while the lead singer writes 'Bloc' on the train window, here is a print screen showing that:
This is also a stamp of brand image, visually showing part of the name of the band. After this first solid link between lyrics and visual, it continues to do so. For example, the song lyrics say the word 'monochrome' and the whole video is monochrome as it is all the same sort of colour.
After the whole song up to this point being about remembering good times, it then speaks about regrets. So as the camera continues to zoom out through trains, the scenes on the trains now turn sad. This sadness is portrayed through snow and the lead singer looking glum. As the song progresses, the band now move out of the train. They are in between two moving trains looking on and the concept is that they are remembering the times in the trains. All sort of dramatic scenarios are used, such as the lead singer rowing down a river in between two moving trains. After these emotional scenes he is banging on the door of one the train carriageways, as he wants to be back in them. The song ends with him laying on the grass outside the train looking at the sky. This is a good representation of how the song finishes as the lyrics at the end result in him never getting back what he is remembering. My concluding point is on how the band dress through out the song. The way the band are dressed indicates the genre of music indie, for example skinny jeans. This along with the greyscale colour of the video are the only real ways of visually telling the song is indie.
Deconstruction of 'Arctic Monkeys - When The Sun Goes Down'
My second music video deconstruction with reference to Andrew Goodwin's theories is another indie rock song, but this time by Arctic Monkeys. The song is about how the world can change when the sun goes down, and focuses on a woman roaming the streets with nowhere to go. The music video mirrors what the song is about, therefore it falls into Goodwin's category of narrative. Throughout the whole video there is no lip miming with the song at all, so this video is strongly narrative.
Similar to the Bloc Party music video, the colour of the opening pictures is an indicator of what genre the video is. The colour is not quite grey at the start, but bleak. This bleakness has nothing artificial in it, and the natural rawness has a very indie feel. The very first opening picture also indicate brand image. This is due to the fact the album cover for this song, is of very similar style to the image on screen. You can see the similar styles in the picture below:
In this song, the lyrics start immediately, and the visuals match the lyrics straight away. As the lyrics are asking who this girl is, roaming the streets, and the visual is a girl just standing there roaming the streets. The song progresses to sing about a scummy man and how he would rob this girl if given the chance. These lyrics are amplified when shown in the visual, like Goodwin said this is a common feature. The visual is off the man robbing an egg of the woman's plate, but the lyrics are hinting at robbing bigger things. I feel that while stealing an egg is worse than what the lyrics intend, it is still exaggeration as it is playing the lyrics out obviously right in your face. A notion of looking is used of the man looking into the camera in order to further portray the lyrics visually. As the lyrics are about seeing a look in his eyes.
Following the above paragraph the song slows down for a moment, before suddenly picking up pace. This is when the visual matches the instruments in the song as the guitar strums fast, while the visual is from inside a fast moving car. Inside the car you see lots of lights, but nothing clear and bright to keep up the indie genre representation. After a further paragraph about goings on's in this girl's life while the sun is down, the chorus comes in. The band are shown briefly during the chorus putting their instruments in a boot. I think this is done at this point as the chorus is the main but so the band should be in the shot, or they'd lose their branding. When the lyrics begin for another verse there is reference to a Ford Mondeo car. Andrew Goodwin said to talk about recognisable products in the media is a common occurrence in music video's, and a Ford Mondeo is a car which every one would have heard of. The band may have received some revenue from Ford for mentioning their car. The song plays right to the end just representing the lyrics by the visual, like a narrative music video should do.
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