Storyboard of Shot Sequences

A storyboard for a shot sequence:












Sequence from near end of video. Not the exact end however.
Final sequence was slightly different e.g. with more cuts to studio performance.

Example: 5. Reference to the notion of looking...

The audience are often invited to look in a voyeuristic way, particularly at the human body and intimate moments, as they can enjoy a voyeuristic or scopophilic pleasure from doing so.

Goo Goo Dolls- 'Iris'

In this video the viewer is openly invited to look (as if) through a telescope at the narrative with Nicholas Cage and a woman. However, I think this is perhaps more a way of linking the performance with the narrative than to give the audience pleasure (sexual or otherwise) as the clips appear to be from a film, and so we just get an impression of seeing clips from a storyline that we are quite distanced from. There isn't really a voyeuristic element to this, I personally feel, as the lead singer, though looking at the characters through telescopes does not appear to do so with shame or his own sexual pleasure in mind, but in a sort of godlike/watching over them way. It seems more paternal, or like an omnipresent god keeping an eye on them.

Kylie Minogue- '2 Hearts'

In this video the audience is invited to watch Kylie as if they are in the audience and she is performing to them live in a seductive way. The eye contact accompanying her 'sexy' movements achieves this. The audience is being invited to get scopophilic pleasure from this video.

Sir Mixalot- 'Baby got back'

Theres alot of objectifying of the body in this video.
The way the women's bodies, not their faces, are what the camera is focused on, causes the audience to feel that their attention is also be drawn and focused onto these women's bodies. The camera tells the audience where to look, so when the camera is framed tightly on a woman's bum, then the audience feel that they are directing their own attention at the bum and hence are objectifying and watching the female body. This is also encouraged by the camera steadily zooming in closer to the body.

Example: 4. Demands of the record company...

Busted- 'What I go to School For'


Busted were a heavily marketed and commercial band, and therefore their record label would have had alot of say in the production of this video, particularly as it was the band's first video release. This makes it a very good video to look at in considering the techniques used to market and promote the actual band/artist through the music video.

• Loads of close-ups continuously of the band members here, particularly Charlie, and particularly through the performance section of the video. These provide good 'visual hooks' and are important in order to identify the performers to the audience. Direct adress also helps to achieve this identification here. This identification of the individual band members through these 'money shots' would have been especially important given that this was their debut video.
• Motifs such as 'the busted jump' (where all the band members jump with their guitars) can also be identified in this video, and can help to give the artist's videos a 'visual style'.
• The iconography of the band's image is also very solid, with their dress codes (rebelliously scruffy clothes; baggy jeans, sweat bands, badges, torn uniform, schoolboy ties- a bit of a visual trademark really), cheeky but not disgraceful behaviour (scruffy uniform, fancying a teacher, dropping a pencil on the floor so the teacher 'shows me more') and all three of them playing guitar together in the very low-slung fashion.

Example: 2. Relationship between lyrics and visuals...

The relationship is either:

• Illustration- where the lyrics are matched by the visuals (this is synchronous), however, this is not always done in a literal way and illustration could be symbolic. Often here the lyrics and narrative will go together tightly.
• Amplification- where new layers of meaning are added to the lyrics by the visuals.
• Disjuncture- where a contradiction occurs between the lyrics and image.

Avril Lavigne- 'Nobody's Home'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbm4G_7rGzQ

(Sorry, embedding is disabled for this video)

This video I think is a good example of the relationship between the lyrics and visuals being illustrative, especially at the part where the homeless girl tries to call home, which indicates that she probably does 'want to go home'. However, it is a more symbolic relationship as someone picks up the phone, and therefore somebody is 'home'- so perhaps it is that 'nobody's home' in the way that she doesn't feel that she has a real 'home' to go to.

In this way the relationship is also one of amplification as it adds new meaning to the lyrics. We would not have necessarily linked the song with a story about a homeless girl who appears to have ran away from home for some reason without seeing the video.

Example: 1. Music Videos demonstrate genre characteristics...

Spice Girls- 'Wannabe'


This video, promoting the Spice Girls who were/are arguably the ultimate girl band, clearly demonstrates genre characteristics, such as:

• There are both individual and synchronised group dance routines.
• The individual group members breaking away and having individual moments where they are directly addressing the camera and performing with attention entirely on them.
• Lip-synching- though featuring in most genres' music videos, it is characteristic of the girl band/pop group to lip synch with no microphone or suggestion of the technical process of recording. The actual musical process is less important (generally) to these groups and their target audiences.
• Also recurrent themes such as fun and mischief making and female empowerment are genre characteristic of the girl band that can be seen here.

Slipknot- 'Duality'

This video, promoting a song by Slipknot, a metal band that are of a decidedly different genre to the Spice Girls demonstrates some clearly different genre characteristics.

• There is a big sense of a live performance, complete with all the equipment that would accompany this. This is a genre characteristic as the target audience for this group would be more into the musical process and probably seeing the band perform live.
• There is a far greater sense of realism with this video, reflected in the live performance and hand held camera style, that is common to this genre.
• Themes of chaos and anger/rage can clearly be seen here, that are common characteristics of this genre and the videos that accompany it.

Blink 182- 'All the small things'

I think this is a very interesting video in terms of genre characteristics of music video, as it is essentially mimicing and often mocking the characteristics of several other genres.

• This mocking and cheekiness is in fact characteristic of the playful, non-serious genre of 'pop-punk-rock' that Blink 182 conform to.
• When performing as 'themselves' they do so with the typical stage-style set up, including instruments, that is common to their genre. This is because their genre of music is also one that takes the musical and instrumental aspects more seriously.

Characteristics of other genres featured in the video:

• The boy/girl band- matching outfits (when leaving the plane at the beginning, and in the 'studio-performance' scene where they are wearing matching camouflage apparrel) are characteristic of this genre, as are the synchronised dance routines. Also the performances here are done so without microphones or musical equipment.

Analysis of ______ using goodwin's theory stuff

Goodwin's theory

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

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. a stage performance in a metal video, a dance routine for a boy/girl band).
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (and this is either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting).
3. There is a relationship between music and viduals (and this is either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting).
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist (visual hooks) and the artist may develop motifs which recurr across their work (a visual style). These include close-ups of the star's face (the 'money shots'), iconography of band image and visual trademarks/motifs.
5. There is frequently reference to the notion of looking (achieved with screens within screens, telescopes etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body (and I believe also increasingly the male body in recent times).
6. There is often intertextual reference (such as to films, TV programmes, other music videos, etc.).

Learning Goodwin's categories I think should help me when analyse music videos myself, and also has impacted on my approach to constructing my own music video.