Andrew GOODWIN’S A summary of Andrew Goodwin’s theory on music from “Dancing in the Distraction Factory” 1993

Narrative Structure Most videos are built around the song. And they don’t typically don’t have a traditional structure to go with it. The artist tends to be the performer and the narrator so us as the audience know that the artist has gone through the situation. As well as this the artist will look directly at the artist as if their singing directly to the person viewing it to make them feel part of the experience. For TV drama you wouldn’t have the actors looking directly through the lens as they want the camera to feel invisible in a way unlike music videos they want to keep hold of your attention.

Repetition in videos Most videos heavily rely on repetition in videos, usually at the bridge or the chorus of the song. The beat of the song usually has some sort of repetition so as we listen to music of that genre again and again we gradually build expectations from a particular artist for example One Direction. They’re style of music has a catchy feel to it so whenever you hear their music, you know there’s a fun, cheesy feel to it.

Visualisation Most videos tend to have some sort of closure or ending to go with it so the audience is second guessing what is going to happen next etc. As the video goes by it builds a climax of visual pleasure with repetitive shots, and sometimes a story line that people can relate to. Music videos forces the audience to watch it multiple times which promotes them into finding out more about the artist and when the release their album or do a tour their would make their money back music videos take so much money to make.

Illustration Illustration in a music video tells the story of the song. It helps visualise what the artist is singing as your seeing it. Ella Henderson’s Ghost follows Goodwin’s theory. It starts of with a man knelling at the river while she sings “I keep going to the river to pray”. As the music video continues we see why he’s there and the consequence of his actions of falling in love and becoming possessive to the point he kills her and Ella is presented as the ghost the killer is thinking about.

Amplification Amplification in music videos occur when the artist is trying to introduce a new meaning that goes with the video. Ed Sheeran’s The A Team follows Goodwin’s Theory. The A team is about a homeless prostitute that smokes crack cocaine which is an A class drug. Ed’s inspiration came from him visiting a homeless shelter and heard some of the stories of the lives people had been living. He then found a way of making it more upbeat so that this subject was more recognised.

Disjuncture When a music video is disjuncture, it means that there’s little connection between the lyrics and the video. Coldplay’s Sky Full Of Stars is an example of this. The song is about a women he loves and the video is of the band walking around doing a live performance in a city.

Recognisable features In music videos artist have do a particular dance move or say something to introduce themselves, one example is Lethal Bizzle. He tends to say Dench in all his songs and has products within his videos saying dench. Music videos also present women as sexual objects to men. Hip-hop videos tend to have women looking provocative and dancing in a particular way. Most of Wiley’s videos tends to have half naked women and the camera is mainly focused on their body parts with the men looking at them as if they’re a piece of meat.