Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Theory

In todays lesson I had an introduction into Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Theory, he splits his theory into six different conventions within a music video. So I spent the lesson learning about his theory by reading through his conventions.

Theory
"Music videos ignore common narrative as they are essentially advertisements. As consumers, we make up our own meaning of a song in our minds. A music video can anchor meaning and gives the record company/artist a method of anchoring meaning"

1. A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, which illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics.

This convention relates to how the artists actions in the music video can have a direct contrast to the lyrics in the song or it can have a similarity. There is an example of this in the music video below,

As you could see from this music video the group used hand signals during the song which was relevant to the song lyrics. The hand signals in this particular music video go along with the lyrics, this shows a clear connection between the lyrics of the song and the choreography in the video. The fact that they have done this it just supports the lyrics giving visual examples aswell as the music and lyrics.



2. Thought Beats: seeing the sounds- The relationship between the music and the visuals, which illustrates, amplifies or contradicts the music.

This is much like the first convention but this time you focus on not the lyrics but on the music only, this is where the choreography becomes important for the video. To have a great dance routine your actions must make sense with the music. The beat has dramatic affect on how the music video should be edited, for example if there is a fast paced beat it would be wise to use fast edits and jump cuts so that the visuals and music go together.


3. Genre-related style and iconography present. (This helps recognise the genre of music)

Iconography is when either an artist, group or music genre is excepted to be recognised through either certain objects or styles.
Slash has had his top hat since 1985, when he decided to shoplift it from a store. At the time, he was still extremely poor and didn’t have the money for it, so he just took it. Luckily for Slash, the hat didn’t have any sensor to set it off as he left. When he got home he decided the hat was a bit boring, and added one of his belts to it for a little flavour. It has been a trademark part of his look ever since. 

Now when I think of Guns n Roses the first thing I think of is Slash's top hat, this is an example of iconography. His unique trademark has separated him and the band a part from the rest of the bands and artists who share the same genre.

4. Multiple close ups of the main artists or vocalist: the creation of a star image to promote a recognizable brand image. (Male Gaze)

Do you trust someone you look up to, marvel and respect? The most common answer is “yes,” and brands gladly use this weak spot of their consumers to sell more by teaming up with celebrities, who actually ‘advise’ you to use some products. This tried-and-true strategy usually delivers nice results, since it builds on the traditional approach—if you like somebody, you trust them and so you are more positive about things they promote. When brands enlist a well-recognized person for their advertising campaigns, they rely on his or her flawless image and perfect relevance with the target audience, put people (including Hollywood A-listers).

Intertextuality

In todays lesson I have been studying Intertextuality, it is recreating a piece of media text and turning it into a different form such as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers did with their music video for Californication. The combination of these two media texts (Music Video & Gaming Animation) created a new form of media unique.



To be more specific intertextuality is using the basis of something and changing the media form such as a story line from a film turned into a music video.

There are three specific areas of intertextuality, these are Bricolage, Parody and Pastiche.

Bricolage

The term bricolage is used to describe a work that is made from combining existing materials, independent of their original purpose.

Parody

A parody, in current use is an imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialize an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, "parody is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice."Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music (although "parody" in music has an earlier, somewhat different meaning than for other art forms),animation, gaming and film.

Pastiche

Pastiche is a literary piece that imitates another famous literary work of another writer. Unlike parody, its purpose is not to mock but to honor the literary piece it imitates.

Album Covers

I have decided to explore further into CD covers and their historical background. From personal experience I can define how an album cover is used to attract buyers due to the artwork on the front cover, whether its simple or just effective, as Music, and CD’s sell. I also know that they act as a protective sleeve for the CD. I have extracted some information from ‘Wikipedia’ to generalise the definition further and explain its purposes:

‘An album cover is the front of the packaging of a commercially-released audio recording product, or album. The term can refer to either the printed cardboard covers typically used to package sets of 10″ and 12″ 78 rpm records, single and sets of 12″ LPs, sets of 45 rpm records (either in several connected sleeves or a box), or the front-facing panel of a CD package, and, increasingly, the primary image accompanying a digital download of the album, or of its individual tracks.


The cover serves three main purposes:

1. To advertise and identify the contents of the music product.
2. To convey the artistic aspirations of the original artists
3. In reproductions of the artwork, to serve as a primary image in the promotional efforts surrounding the product, as an identifiable image associated with it’

Over the decades since album covers were revolutionised, there have been many controversial album covers. Aspects of artwork associated with sexuality/nudity, religious beliefs, trademarks have been either banned or dismissed due to violence, graphical content or plagiarism.


 RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS- MOTHER’S MILK (1989)

The album cover features a black and white photograph of the band sprawled across the arms of a proportionately larger naked woman. A rose conceals one of her nipples while Kiedis’ standing body conceals the other. Several national chains refused to sell the record because they believed the female subject displayed too much nudity. A stricter censored version was manufactured for some retailers that featured the band members in far larger proportion than the original.

 Appetite for Destruction released on July 21, 1987

Album's original cover art, based on Robert Williams' painting "Appetite for Destruction", depicted a robotic rapist about to be punished by a metal avenger. After several music retailers refused to stock the album, the label compromised and put the controversial cover art inside, replacing it with an image depicting a cross and skulls of the five band members (designed by Billy White Jr., originally as a tattoo), each skull representing one member of the The band: Izzy Stradlin, top skull; Steven Adler, left skull; Axl Rose, center skull; Duff McKagan, right skull; and Slash, bottom skull. The photographs used for the back of the album and liner notes were taken by Robert John, Marc Canter, Jack Lue, Leonard McCardie, and Greg Freeman. The original cover was supposed to be on the 2008 re-pressing of the vinyl, though the record label replaced it with the "Skulls" art at the last minute. The re-pressing of the vinyl, though, is the first Guns N' Roses release to have the Parental Advisory label printed on the artwork; previously, like on the CD, this was a sticker on the cellophane wrap and later (on the CD and cassette releases) on the case itself.

With the increasing popularity of digital music downloading services and the inflating cost of conducting business, the purpose and prevalence of the album cover is evolving. While the music industry tries to keep up with technological and cultural shifts, the role that packaging (and thus the "album cover") will play in consumer music sales in the near future is uncertain, although its role is certainly changing, and digital forms of packaging will continue to surface, which, to some degree (and to some consumers) take the place of physical packaging. Both MP3 and WMA music files are able to contain embedded digital album artworks (called cover images or simply covers) in jpeg format. As of 2008, physical music products, with a physical "album cover", continue to outsell digital downloads.

In August 2008, album cover designer Peter Saville, responsible for cover art on albums by New Order and Roxy Music, suggested that the album cover was dead.

Alternately, some artists have used Internet technology to generate even more cover art. For instance, Nine Inch Nails initially released its album The Slip as a free download on the band's website, attaching separate but thematically connected images to each individual track. On February 14, 2013, rapper Tyler, The Creator announced his new record Wolf (Tyler, The Creator album) would be released with three different available album covers.

One digital solution is the iTunes LP format for interactive album artwork introduced by Apple on 9 September 2009.

Album art is still considered a vital part of the listening experience to many such as myself, and despite the less-tangible nature of digital images, there are still many collectors trading cover art and music.

How I would design the video 3

Melancholy Hill is my favourite song by the Gorillaz, this is because I find it to be relaxing and enjoyable to listen too. One of the reasons why I love the Gorillaz is because of their interesting and unique music videos. I have always been drawn into their videos as it is the art and the animation that has kept me interested in the group as they make the video humorous. As I said this is a relaxing soothing song I believe, therefor I believe it deserves a relaxing video. It is hard for me to design a video for this song as to me it is perfect, but if I were to design it I would like to think a fairground scene in the night would be nice compliment to the song, I would shoot the video in the pitch black at the beginning and as the music starts slowly have the fairgrounds power come on for all the rides. This would go with the pace of the music I think, I would have my cast on all the rides using different shots for all giving me a selection of shots when it came to editing.

How I would design the video 2

Now this is more of an upbeat song, again I believe that the video matches the song perfectly but there are some aspects that I would change and add. To start the video I would have the band exiting an airport in Tokyo, this would have much greater beginning for the song. I wouldn't of used the day scenes in the video as those scenes attempted to add humour to the video which I do not believe it did. Instead I would have an all night theme to the video of them not just in clubs and bars but of maybe in open spaces in Tokyo. I believe that this would make the video more interesting whilst still keeping in key with the original music and lyrics. This is not all, I would have them in some scenes in a heavily crowded area of Tokyo maybe on a road as I believe that this would go well with the lyrics of how they want to go back. To finish the video I would have them in the middle of a crowded area as I have just stated and as the song ends I would lift the camera to view the landscape of Tokyo, this I believe would complement the song.

How I would design the video 1

As this is one of my favourite songs and one of my favourite music videos I believe that the music video for this song is as close to perfection for this song as can be. If I was the one to design the video for this song I would definitely make sure that I had an empty scene throughout the video so that the visual aspect connects with the song, such as a beach, field, park or an empty highway to emphasise the sorrow of the song. For the time scale in the video I would have the focus point of the video (singer) travel threw the day from sunrise to sunset, this again will strengthen the idea of loneliness.

What Makes a good Music Video

Now as soon as I knew that I had to start looking at existing music videos for ideas and to find out what makes a good music video, I knew that I had to use 'Sledgehammer' by Peter Gabriel. I love this music video and I believe that it is a video that I can gather a lot of inspiration from. this video. As good as this video is, it is clearly an extremely difficult video to make. As the music video has to be completely my groups creation, to make something like this would be nearly impossible to make in time for the deadline thanks to all the animations. I do like the idea of maybe using some short animations that seem to be random but makes the music video more interesting.