Goodwin
Goodwin identifies that a number of key features manage to distinguish a music video as being a form:
1. Particular music genres may have their own music video style and iconography. For example, punk rock bands tend to have a mixed narrative and performance. Girl and boybands tend to have a dance routine.
- As our song comes under a punk rock, indie genre we could go with the mixed narrative and performance iconography or we could decide to go out of the stereotype and just have a narrative or performance.
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. Music videos tend to illustrate the lyrics by using visuals to help the viewer understand.
3. There is a relationship between music and the visuals. The camerawork, camera shots, editing, mise en scene and lighting should work with the song.
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs (or star iconography) which recur across their work. This should hopefully mean that the artist will create a star image for themselves and look good for the record company.
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatement of the female body. Within the song that we have chosen this could be particularly hard to portray. At the moment we have chosen that we want to use a male actor, but if this is not possible due to not finding the correct image that we would like, we do have a female actress in mind. If we were to use the female actress this would be very easy to do as the song we have chosen is called 'Actin' a disgrace'.
6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc).
Dyer
Stars and Stardom;
In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, you must consider the roles of music stars. The term 'star' refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around the music perfomers in order to sell the performer to a large and loyal audience.
These are some common values in the music industry:
- Youthfulness
- Rebellion
- Sexual Magnetism
- An anti-authoritarian attitude
- Originality
- Creativity/talent
- Agression/anger
- A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour
- Conspicuous consumption of sex, drugs and material goods
- Success against the odds
Richard Dyer has written about the role of stars in film, TV and music. He found that stars do have some key features in common:
- A star is an image, a persona, which is constructed out of a range of materials including advertising and magazines.
- Stars are produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings.
- They depend on a range of subsidiary media - magazines, TV, radio and the internet - so that they can construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences.
Negus
"What I'm looking for is the working act. The real act. The act that can get up on stage and do it. That act will give you a career. I signed Black Sabbath umpteen years ago; they are still making records. These are acts that are career acts..Two years ago I started a dance label..Now that's not a carer orientated label. I mean those records are one-off situations and every now and again maybe you'll get an artist come out of it."
Record Company executive, quoted in Negus (1989)
- Identifies two distinct ways of thinking about potential artists from within the music industry.
- These ideologies shape the way in which the artists' images and careers are developed, and the way that they are marketed towards specific target audiences
- The organic ideology of creativity and the synthetic ideology of creativity.
Steve Archer
The following 5 things should be found in recent music videos
1. 'Thought Beats' or seeing the sounds in your head. The basis for visualising images is found from the psychological process called synaesthesia which is where you are able to picture sounds in your mind's eye. When understanding a music video this idea is important as they build on the soundtrack's visual associations in order to connect with the audience and provide an additional pleasure.
This approach means that you need to stat with the music and sort out the way that the song works. You should take into account the way that it has been stacked up with sound. Lyrics do not need to be analysed word for word as they should be considered for the way that the introduce a general feeling or mood. Long lyrics very rarely have a meaning which can be simply read but even if they don't have a clear meaning they are still important in creating a sense of subject matter. Key phrases and lines - especially the lines in the chorus - will play a large part in the visuals associated with the song in the mind's eye.
2. Narrative and performance
Rarely do songs tell complete narratives. The narrative in songs affects the way stories are used in the music video representations of a song's meanings which normally ends up with a suggestion of a story. Music videos should avoid a classic realist narrative because that is their role in advertising. We should be able to watch the video repeatedly in a casual way with a looser approach to their storytelling. I think that narrative is important in music videos but I also believe that the performance is important as well. Normally, music videos cut between a music performance and narrative. Sometimes, dancing which has been choreographed is used and can be used for an extra aspect to aid visualisation and the 'repeatability' factor. Sometimes, the artist (most commonly the singer) will be part of the story, acting as the narrator and participant at the same time. The lip-syncing close-up and the miming of playing the instrument remains at the heart of music videos as it shows us what the band can really do.
3. The star image
The music business relies on big name stars to fund its activities as it usually fails to connect with the popular audiences - only about one in ten acts put out by the industry actually makes any money. Therefore, what we can describe as the meta-narrative of the star image will have an important part to play in the music video production process. Meta-narrative is a term which describes the development of the star image over time.
4. Three ways in which music videos relate visuals to the song
These are illustration, amplification and disjuncture and I find them extremely useful in attempting to generalise the effects of individual music videos.
- Music videos can illustrate the meaning of lyrics and genre, providing a sometimes over literal set of images. Here, then, is the most straightforward technique and the classic example of visualisation, with everything in the music video based on the source of the pop song.
- However, as with all advertising, the most persistent type of video adds to the value of the song. Amplification is seen as the mark of the true music video Auteur, the director as artist, and an increasingly common way to view music video creatives. Crucially, though, and what separates it from disjuncture, is the fact that amplification music videos retain a link with the song and work to enhance or develop ideas, rather than fundamentally changing them.
- Disjuncture is a term used to describe those music videos that (normally intentionally) seem to work by ignoring the original song and creating a whole new set of meanings. This is quite a radical technique and used by arty bands in order to assert their difference and originality to an audience.
The last, essential aspect of music video to study is technical. This includes camerawork, movement and angle, mise-en-scene, editing and sound. It is important to remember the more general features of music videos already mentioned when trying to work out the technical effects, especially those which are post-production effects. Broadly, the technical conventions can be summed up below;
1.Speed! Speed is visualised by camera movement, fast editing (montage) and digital effects.
- Camera movement is often motivated by running, dancing and walking performers.
- Fast-cutting and montage editing creates a visually decentred experience necessary for music video consumption, with the images occasionally moving so fast that they are impossible to understand on first viewing and thus need to be viewed several times (repeatability).
- Post-production digital effects - a staple of music video where images can be colourized, multiple split screens appear, and so on, all to complicate and intrigue, providing pleasure again and again.
Not all camera movement is about speed though and some use slow pace through dissolves or static shots. This kind of editing is striking and effective in setting the song apart from the hustle and bustle of most pop activity.
2. Meat! The meat of most music videos is the cut to the close-up of the singer's face. This is because the voice is seen as the most important part of pop music.
3. Beats! Often, the video will try and represent the music through the use of the cut to go with the beat or key rhythm.
4. Lighting and colour may also be used to emphasise key moments in the song, using methods from lighting live performances for dramatic effect. Colour may be used to show a development in the song, going from colour to black and white or vice versa when the chorus comes in. Equally, any change in the mise-en-scene or camerawork can signal the sme type of thing.
5. Mise-en-scene - obviously the setting for music videos is important, often guarantee the authenticity of the clip rather than anything else. So mise-en-scene for many music videos is the concert hall or rehearsal room to emphasise the realness of the performance or the grit and practice that goes into attaining star quality. Increasingly, CGI is used, especially for dance songs which don't really rely so much on being 'real' like rock and rap acts.
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