Andrew Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin Theory

Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features in music videos. They are:

- A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
- A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
- Genre-related style and iconography present.
- Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
- Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
- Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.

He says that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visuals and the song plus the artist. Relationships are built between these in the video, and the close-ups of the artists gives them the representation and publicity they require. Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos.

Many of these features are present in all music videos, depending on the genre of the song and the aim of the record company/artist.

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She worked at the British Film Institute for many years before taking up her current position.

The gaze is characterised by who is the gazer (viewer):

• The spectator's gaze: that of the spectator viewing the text, i.e. the reader(s) of the text.
• The Intra-diegetic gaze: in a text, a character gazes upon an object or another character in the text.
• The Extra-diegetic gaze: a textual character consciously addresses (looks at) the viewer, e.g. in dramaturgy, an aside to the audience; in cinema, acknowledgement of the fourth wall, the viewer.
• The camera's gaze: is the film director's gaze. The editorial gaze: emphasises a textual aspect, e.g. a photograph, its cropping and caption direct the reader(s) to a specific person, place, or object in the text.

Theorists Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen posit that the gaze is a relationship, between offering and demanding a gaze: the indirect gaze is the spectator's offer, wherein the spectator initiates viewing the subject, who is unaware of being viewed; the direct gaze is the subject's demand to be viewed.


The Male Gaze and feminist theory:


In the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of the "male gaze" as a feature of power asymmetry. The concept has been strongly influential on feminist film theory and media studies. In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body, for instance. Mulvey argues that in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze.

Beyonce's music video featuring lady gaga, is a good example of how the 'male gaze' is used in a music video. Both females are dressed in very revealing clothes, and use rather suggestive dance moves. At 2:54 Beyonce is crouching down stroking a very large gun (phallic object) which is sure to capture the attention of men. Also at 4:47 the camera focuses on Beyonce's body and cuts out her head which again looks at the male gaze and feminist theory "a scene may linger on the curves of a woman's body".

Genre

Genre

What is Genre/sub genre?

 A category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.

Genre we have chosen and why?

The electro-pop and dance-pop genres are the dominating genres of the year 2010 so far with artists like Lady Gaga, Kesha,The Black Eyed Peas, Taio Cruz, Usher, and Katy Perry topping the charts. 

We chose to do Potential Breakup Song by Aly and Aj not only because electro pop is a popular genre of music, but also because we liked its upbeat lively tempo. We felt that a more upbeat song will be more fun and dynamic to work with and so we feel that this genre is well suited for us.

What are the main generic conventions of a music video in your chosen genre? 

Background research:

Although synthpop in part arose from punk rock, it abandoned punk's emphasis on authenticity and often pursued a deliberate artificiality, sometimes using synthesizers to replace all other instruments. It owed relatively little to the foundations of early popular music in jazz, folk music or the blues, and instead of looking to America, in its early stages, it consciously focused on European and particularly Eastern European influences. Early synthpop has been described as "eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing", using droning electronics with little change in inflection. Later the introduction of dance beats made the music warmer and catchier and contained within the conventions of three-minute pop. Because synthesizers removed the need for large groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation.

Characteristics:

The lyrics often involve issues of love and peace, dancing and partying, or expressing and overcoming difficult emotions. The Synthasizer is usually the dominant instrument used in electo pop music. Electro pop music emphasizes percussion and rhythm with the percussion generally being a "kick" bassdrum with some variations on a 4/4 time signature. While the percussion is always done by synthesizers, it is a sound more typical of dance music and not the "beat box" sound typical of rap music. The tempo is typically around 140 beats per minute, but may vary.

Iconography used in the music video's of our genre? 


Electro pop is all about technology, connectivity, optimism and brightness. Lots of bold, vivid colours and graphics, kaleidoscopic patterns, postmodern art influences with bold colour contrasts, edgy black and hot white, retro kitch and urban chic all rolled into one bright and twisted style. Electro pop is quirky and fun, drawing on the surreal strangeness of artist Slavador Dali, and the intensely saturated pop iconography of Andy Warhol! We will see a huge amount of influence coming in from the likes of comic books, graphic novels and pop art! A lot of these features are seen in Aly and Aj's Potential Breakup song music video, with the paint splash effect and black and white colour scheme.

Is your chosen song's genre typically narrative, performance, concept or a combination?


I think that our genre is a combination of narrative, performance and concept, however our the music video for our song was all performance, there was no separate scene going on to show a 'break up'. When we come to make our music video for this song we are hoping to use a combination to make our music video less repetitive and more fun to watch.

Email..

Here is our draft for the email we are planning on sending to the producers of Aly & Aj. We still however have to find an email address in order to contact them.

Dear    ,
our names are Andrea Walker and Beste Bayram, we are studying Media for A2 which involves producing a music video for our coursework. We are both big fans of Aly & Aj and we love their music particularly their 'Potential Breakup Song'. We were hoping you would give us your permission to use the song for our music video. We have no intent of selling our video it is merely just for school purposes. Please get back to us to let us know if this is ok and also contact us if there are any concerns.

Many Thanks

Good Points:
I love the big beautiful locations, and her unusual yet stunning outfits. I also like the mix of coloured shots and black and white shots, it gives it more variety and makes it more interesting to watch.

Bad Points:
We were put off of the fact that we would need a male character and we didn't want to have to rely on other people to be available for when we need to film.



Good Points:
It's a nice song, tells a story through the lyrics, liked the wind effect and the location of the house with all the sheets draped and blowing around. Also like the shots when she's under a piece of material, something we could easily do in our music video.

Bad Points:
Nothing really happens, there aren't many effects and the colour is quite dull throughout.



Good Points: I love this music video, I think the locations are really beautiful, the light blue sky, the big red tree, the hotel room right by the sea etc. I loved how the light pastel colours contrast really nicely with her bright red hair it makes her stand out and makes sure that the focus is on her. I also like the moment when she is lying on the bed and slowly she gets further away from the guy, this looked really effective and went well with the lyrics 'distance between us'.

Bad Points: This would be a hard song choice for us as we would again need a male character at some point and obviously a big king size bed, preferably somewhere that looked like California since that is the point of the song. Its also slow and so less will be happening meaning that the location and costume has to be extra special otherwise it'll get boring to watch. Obviously we are limited with what we have available to us.

The reason we decided to choose Potential Breakup by Aly and Aj was because they aren't particularly that famous, I hadn't heard of them until a couple of months ago when we started researching for a song. We also both wanted to be in the music video and so we were particularly interested in songs with two female parts, and so when we found these two female artists we were quite excited, mainly because there aren't many. After listening to lots of their songs we chose the one that we both liked most because of its upbeat, lively tempo. Immediately we were inspired and started coming up with creative, fun ideas which would go well with the lyrics and with the meaning of the song. Another thing which we liked was the fact that the original music video isn't particularly exciting which is a good thing as we won't be tempted to do somthing similar, but instead do something completely different and much more creative.

Here are the lyrics for our song Potential Breakup by Aly and Aj..

Potential Breakup

It took too long
It took too long
It took to long for you to call back
And normally I would just forget that
Except for the fact it was my birthday
My stupid birthday

I played along
I played along
I played along
rolled right off my back
But obviously my armor was cracked
What kind of a boyfriend would forget that?
Who would forget that?

The type of guy who doesn’t see
What he has until she leaves
Don’t let me go
Cause without me, you know you’re lost
Wise up now or pay the cost
Soon you will know

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
living for me

This is the potential breakup song
Our album needs just one
Oh baby please
Please tell me

We got along
We got along
We got along until you did that
Now all I want is just my stuff back
Do you get that?
Let me repeat that
I want my stuff back

You can send it in a box
I don’t care just drop it off
I won’t be home
Cause without me, you know you’re lost
Minus you I’m better off
Soon you will know

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
living for me

You can try, you can try
You know I know it’d be a lie
Without me you’re gonna die
So you better think clearly, clearly
Before you nearly, nearly
Mess up the situation that your gonna miss dearly, dearly
C’mon

You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
Livin’ with me
You’re not winnin’ till you’re winnin’
Winnin’ me
You’re not gettin’ till you’re gettin’
Gettin’ to me
You’re not livin’ till you’re livin’
living for me

This is the potential breakup song
Our album needs just one
Oh baby please
Please tell me

This is the potential make-up song
please just admit you’re wrong
Which will it be?
Which will it be?

During the chorus sections we are hoping to get lots of different funky, lively shots of me and Beste having fun, splashing around in the sea, on rides, laughing etc.

Possible location..

In yesterdays lesson me and Beste started talking about ideas for exciting locations and we've decided that we really like the idea of filming at Southend beach and possibly on the rides in the theme park. We also discused the weather and we said that we'd go no matter what the weather, because even if it's raining we'd still get some great footage, rain would actually be quite effective.

I also really liked the idea of filming on the peer, I think we could get some really lovely shots.

We started coming up with lots of ideas for shots which we could get from the beach. When I was on holiday I drew a heart in the sand and I suddenly had an idea that we could film the heart being washed away by the sea since our song is about 'break up', and so I told Beste my idea and she really liked it.