Andrew Goodwin - Music Video Theory

Andrew Goodwin - Music Video Theory

What did Andrew Goodwin do?

Andrew Goodwin was a director of music who created a theory on music videos. The theory contains six steps which aim to assist music video directors in capturing the audience when making music videos. Originally Goodwin outlined these six steps in his book 'Dancing in the distraction factory'.

Andrews Six Points:

1) There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals with visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.

2) There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.

3) Genres are complex and diverse in terms of music video style and iconography.

4) Record companies will demand a lot of close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.

5) Voyeurism is present in many music videos, especially in the treatment of females, but also in terms of systems of looking. Some examples are screens within screens, cameras, mirrors, etc.

6) There are likely to be intertextual references either to other music videos or to films and TV texts, these provide further gratification and pleasure for the viewers/fans

Looking at Andrews Six Points in this Music Video

Clean Bandit (2020). Clean Bandit and Mabel - Tick Tock (feat. 24kGoldn) [Official Video]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC8SPG2LwSA [Accessed 21 Sep. 2020].

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Point 1

As stated above Goodwin's first point implies there is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.

The screenshot above comes from the chorus of the song. In the chorus the lyrics are talking about how

someone is struggling to get over a relationship. It has lyrics such as 'think about you night and day'

and 'tick tock tick tock'. I believe the meaning of the lyrics is not reflected with the visuals, however the visuals illustrate the lyrics very well. For example, they are dancing in front of a clock when they sing 'tick tock' and the sky changes between night and day throughout the video. The overall visuals of this video make something thats pleasing to watch, with loose references to the theme of the song. I think this video fits very well with Goodwins first point.

Point 2

'There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music'.

The tempo of the song is reasonably fast and the visuals keep up with it perfectly. The tone of the music is quite upbeat and inspiring which fits very well with the bright, upbeat nature of the visuals. The visuals use a editing very well in time with the music, making parts of the videos relationship with the music explicit. The overall relationship between the visuals and music is a very good fit, both compliment and bounce of each other fitting to the same tempo, tone and overall upbeat nature.

Point 3

'Genres are complex and diverse in terms of music video style and iconography'.

The genre of this music is pop. Pop music in videos comes with conventions such as, bright colours,
dancing, light, makeup and fashion accessories. Many of these conventions are seen within this music

video such as the bright colours of the set, the fashion and make up of the performers etc. This is all leading to back up this part of the theory because the conventions of a pop music video are very different from conventions of a heavy metal video. 

Another Pop song by Sigala backs up some conventions of pop.

SigalaVEVO (2017). Sigala, Ella Eyre - Came Here for Love (Official Music Video). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq8fE3kKIBk [Accessed 23 Sep. 2020].‌

It contains Bright colours (Seen above), dancing, light, makeup and. fashion accessories and an overall upbeat and feelgood mood.

Point 4

'Record companies will demand a lot of close-ups of their star/performers'.

Clean bandits tick tock uses the singer mabel. Throughout the music video there are many many shots of mabel, but also clean bandit themselves.

The reason for Mabel appearing the most throughout the video is likely because she is the main feature of this song, however the song does not have any direct correlation to her because it was written by Clean Bandit and she just sings it. Because of this Mabel's record company likely wanted Mabel to be in the video as much as she could, as this will lead to more people watching the video leading to an overall increased stream of revenue. How Mabel is presented in this video could be seen as quite 'sexy' with the close up shots of her dancing from certain angles capturing certain areas of her body. This is partly down to the record company trying to get people to know who she is, and explore the rest of her music - so they can earn more money - because of the sex appeal. In this aspect, Mabel is objectified, however I do not believe this is a bad case of objectification of females in music videos as there is definitely worse cases out there.

Point 5

'Voyeurism is present in many music videos, especially in the treatment of females, but also in terms of systems of looking'.

Throughout the song I do not believe we such much voyeurism taking place, as this music video is more of a performance. Voyeurism often takes place when the audience is subjected to watching something intimate or private which they would not normally watch in every day life. This again keeps people watching for that 'sex appeal'.

While it is not featuring for sex appeal, there is a small example of voyeurism featuring in this video where Jack (one of the clean bandit members) is playing with trains - it is like a peak into his personal life. It feels private, so naturally, people are interested.

Point 6

'There are likely to be intertextual references either to other music videos or to films and TV texts, these provide further gratification and pleasure for the viewers/fans'.

Looking into this point of Goodwin's theory I can not find how this works with the music video. However, in some link from watching the behind the scenes video, I found out that there is a deeper contextual link to the train station scene. It is because the song touches on being addicted to something and how relentless it is. The model trains with Jack represent something that Jack used to be addicted to. While in theory this kind of proves the point I believe that this point of the theory is not very strong or proven within the video.