Wednesday 6 April 2011

Our Music video in terms of Andrew Goodwin.


I mentioned Goodwin's theories in a much earlier post and now i am going to apply his theories into our music video to see just how right he was.

"The creation of character identities for stars provides a point of identification for the audience/spectator which is especially important when lyrics often lack depth."

Right from the start we instantly produce an identity, clearly displayed on the drum kit pan shot. At this very early stage the audience doesn't know who t
his identity is yet but they are aware of the name.

We then produce a character related to the name at around 10 seconds when t
he lead singer starts. The audience now knows a little bit more; they know the name of the band and the picture of a face related to it. We haven't put a full band shot in front of the name on the drum kit at the start because that is far too much information for the audience to take in at the start, we wanted it to be fed them gradually. They have quite a lot of information at this point despite not even hearing any of the lyrics yet.

Then we finally reveal the whole band with the name clearly displayed at the back in the centre of the screen and the audience can now see who everyone is, what everyone plays and what they look like. It is at this stage that they start to gain some sense of personality which they can be identified by. This is exactly what Goodwin is trying to say; that identity has to be established for the video to have any effect on the audience, they need to know who they are listening to. Also the long shot is very simple, the screen is split up into 3 sections and there isn't a lot to distract them as shown in the picture below.

Add Image

Also their costumes are very casual which makes them seem more like ordinary people rather than hip hop rock stars which a lot of bands do today to make them easier to relate to and in the action of trying to deter away from an image, they have in fact created one. They tried to deter away from likes of Lady GaGa's extravagant costumes because they don't want that sort of identity.

He also says that: The construction of stars is central to the economics of the music industry – only stars guarantee sales and long careers

This is the point that creates some confusion. The video has clearly created a star image as shown, but what makes them a "star" is how the audience perceives them. So if they are perceived well then they can guarantee sales because people like them, but to say that they will have long careers is a sweeping statement. There are hundreds of artists who have been what's known as a "one hit wonder" where the artists makes one massive hot or album and then we never hear of them again.


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