Analysing my own music video using Andrew Goodwin's ideas
My Music Video: https://youtu.be/YLvZzU7W4-E
My Music video was a narrative based music video for the song Chances Kaytranada. Throughout the story of the video you see a girl get influenced by her friend to do these things which she would normally not do, like smoke and take pills.
The first idea of Andrew Goodwin's is that there is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics. In my music video there is a very direct relationship to the lyrics and visuals in the sense that the main character lip syncs part of the song as seen below. This is an obvious link because the video is directly syncing to the lyrics. However, while only a very basic relation I believe it amplifies the lyrics extremely well because, it allows people to set even more attention on what the lyrics actually are.
The lyrics of the song have a very not a care in the world feel to them. Throughout the video we brought that out in the sense of 'good times'. You can see in the dance scene for example, people having a good time as well as the characters just laughing throughout. This is one of the ways the lyrics relate. The look of the video comes with a 'old camera' style which we believed was most fitting for the tone of the song which almost sounded like something from the past. It sounded like a song people would be 'off their heads' too. In terms of lyrics, there was not a huge relationship but the one bit we did think about is when the lyrics talk about 'taking chances' relating to when she takes the pills - she is chancing her life.
Goodwin's second idea is that there is a relationship between the music and visuals, with the visual illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics. In my music video we worked very much the feel of the music itself. When we heard it, we all felt like the song had a similar feel to the lyrics. It conveyed not having a care in the world as well as good times and good vibes. We took the idea of 'not having a care in the world' and made both the characters smoke. They do this because, they do not care about anything,
As you progress into the video you will notice the editing is pretty much always on time to the song. This was a choice I actively made in order to enhance the the music video. I would say in whole that the visuals of the music video are in no way contradictory to the lyrics and music.
The third idea is that Genres are complex and diverse in terms of music video style and iconography. In my music video we based it of the song 'Chances' by Kaytranada which sits in the genre of R&B/Soul. These together both work hand in hand and come with conventions such as, girls, men, fast pace and much more. In our music video, I believe the first half does not stick to any of the typical conventions of these genres. In the second, during the rave scene it starts to feel more fast pace, with shots of both me and woman which are three of the major conventions.
The fourth idea of Goodwin's is that Record Companies will demand a lot of close-ups of their star performers. In this music video there was several close up shots included. The idea of the close up shots in this music video was not to build up any 'reputation' for the main character but instead to create several intimate feeling moments with the main character as well as trying to exaggerate more on the idea of being 'off your head'. We wanted to simulate the 'cramped' environment of a rave with everyone being bundled together.
Sometimes, close ups in music videos can be seen as objectifying. It was essential to us that this did not happen in this music video. We made sure that the only close ups we did were of face or feet and no body parts that would cause uncomfort. We have created an intimate feel without having to 'reduce a person to an instrument of sexual pleasure'.
The fifth idea is voyeurism. A voyeur is someone who looks. Voyeurism is the practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviour. This is common in a lot of music videos. We tried to create this idea of voyeurism in are music video when the audience watches the main character and her friend do drugs. An activity which people do not like to be watched doing due to the illegal nature of it.
The final idea is that there a likely to be intertextual references to other music videos, TV shows, books, etc. In this music video, we made no direct correlation to any other sources. However in our mind we heavily related the idea of the dance scene to a scene out of the netflix show white lines. We wanted originality within the video so we decided to take as little inspiration as possible and come up with our own ideas from the get go.
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