Research and Planning: Key Concepts

Source form Student notes

BFI Education 2005

Key Feature of Music videos

Andrew Goodwin, in Dancing in the Distraction Factory (1992, Routledge) has identified the following features of music videos.

1.       Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine boy/girl band.)

2.       There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals ( either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)

3.       There is a link between music and visuals.

4.       The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style)

5.       There is frequently reference to the notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

6.       There is often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc.).

It is also worth considering;

Whether the video is primarily performance-based, narrative-based or concept based and how elements of each are used in it.