Andrew Goodwin's Theory

Andrew Goodwin, a director of music, identified a number of key features that we as an audience look out for in music videos, these are:

• A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
  - Lyrics can be amplified throughout a music video, either through a sheer sudden or shocking visual such as a death or crash, which is an important part to the song, either the chorus or the bridge, e.g: a sudden death to end the song. You can translate the lyrics into visuals, e.g: running away, then the lyrics say, "running through the woods". Another way in which the relationship between lyrics and visuals can work is through contradicting lyrics and visuals, this adds a clever element to the video, e.g: the lyrics being: "I will always love you" and the visuals being a montage of different clips of the person destroying items of that certain loved one.
• A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.- There will always be a link between visuals and lyrics, no matter how little or big. A way in showing this could be through a storyline narrative, this is by visually displaying the story that the lyrics are telling. Another way could be via instruments and the way the rhythm links in the with cuts of the video, e.g: fast cuts, montages or slow motion shots to go with a slow beat of a drum.
• Genre-related style and iconography present.
• Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
  - In many music videos the importance of making the artist or band the main focal point of the music video makes them easily recognisable to their fans. Close-ups create a connection between the artist and the audience.
• Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
  - Many modern artists and bands use female sexuality to seduce the male audience for publicity reasons. The trick of this has been used throughout history and is an effective technique.
  
  
• Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.
  - In Kanye West's video, Gold Digger there are intertextual references to pin-up girls throughout his video. The use of this widens the audience and attracts the audience whom are into pin-ups.