APPLYING GOODWIN’S THEORY TO MY MUSIC VIDEO

Goodwin’s Theory is based on 8 main principles:

1. Links between Lyrics and Visuals2. Links between Music and Visuals (Complimentary, Contradicting or

Amplification)3. Genre Characteristics4. Intertextual Reference5. Notions of Looking (objectification of women)6. Voyeurism (direct gaze, other people looking at artist, insight into

artists life, screens and mirrors)7. Demands of the record label (representation of the artist)8. Performance based, Narrative based or Concept based music videos

My video

In this presentation I am going to try and apply Goodwin’s theory to the music video that we created for Constellations by Enter Shikari

Goodwin suggests that lyrics will make constant references to visuals on screen. Firstly the fact that the lyrics describe a trainstation sirectly relates to our video because it was shot at a trainstation with this in mind. In the video I created. the visuals relate directly to the lyrics “I glance up to the train timetable board” where we shot the train timetable board and sped it up to put in our video.

Goodwin suggests that the visuals on the screen will also be representative of the music in the song. The beginning of our video is very slow and uses slow fades to compliment the slow background music. Towards the end of the song when the pace of the song speeds up we have the actor sprinting which represents the pace of the music.

Genre Characteristics

These are depicted as certain traits associated with a particular type of music. A characteristic of a rock video is to have the band performing in the video. We had an actor who was supposed to be the lead singer of the band singing in the video therefore our video applies to this claim.

Notion of lookingNotions of looking plays on the ideas of gaze and the way someone in particular is seen. A prime example of this is the representation of women in music videos. However this one of the sections of Goodwin’s theory that out music video does not apply to as our video revolves solely around one person.

Narrative

The narrative is a major part of music videos with it being either fragmented or linear. The storyline for our video is a very simple linear storyline that allows the audience to follow, meeting the characteristics of Goodwin’s theory.

Thought Beats

Another suggestion made by Goodwin was that the beats in a song reflect the visuals on screen.

When making our video we particularly set out to achieve this and this is achieved in the introduction to our video where each beat is represented by a slow fade in the video.