Out of the Box Production

Andrew Goodwin's Theory

Goodwin believed that the visuals and illustration of a music video should match up with the music and the beat. An example can be seen through Kendrick Lamar's video, 'Alright' where the beat is synchronized with the jump cuts or transitional shots in the video. For Goodwin, he believed that this was essential as it created visual matching music for the audience to view. Another example is Childish Gambino's 'Sweatpants' here, in the the video, even though it is only for a few seconds, along with the beat there is synchronized, consistent, nodding amongst the cast that matched the beat of the music. Another example is 'Gold Digger' by Kanye West. Here, Kanye is moving back and forth, matching the beat of the music, creating a free-flowing, impressive consistency. The repetitive jump cut is accompanied with the words "Money, Money", matched with Kanye's movements and the editing. Furthermore, this can be seen clearly through Jason Derulo's music video, "Wiggle". Here, at the end, there is a non-diegetic sound of clapping using to mimic the sound of twerking. The use of visual matching is used through Derulo moving his hands, forming a clapping motion along with the music. This, along with multiple jump cuts to show him doing it multiple times, allows the audience to identify the amplification of the beat and the significance of the sound.

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GENRE CONVENTIONS/ ICONOGRAPHY

According to Goodwin, there are certain traits associated with a music genre. For example, mainly for a punk rock band/genre, there is a consistency of using instruments, lip-syncing and naturalistic expressions in their music videos. This is a characteristic of their genre. For Rap/Hip-Hop, it has many different characteristics and each video can vary from the other but mainly, they consist of large jewelry, flashy cars/houses, hoods/urban clothing to properly represent the genre. This can be properly seen through Soulja Boy's video, 'Crank That'. It shows him wearing oversized urban clothing, large 'bling', a flashy car, a packed gymnasium and 'hood' life. Through this use of mise-en-scene, it tells the audience that this is a rap/hip-hop video and allows the audience to be able to differentiate between the genres easily. It is uncommon for a genre to make a different type of video for their music. For example, Rap/Hip-Hop almost always consists of a woman/women wearing skimpy clothing and girls playing Double Dutch. (Music videos can also be linked to film genre, e.g, lots of punk/rock videos are based on horror movies). Other examples include a dance routine typically for a girl/boy band, bikini clad woman, sports car for a rap video, etc.

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INTER-TEXTUAL REFERENCES

Goodwin recognized that it was not uncommon for either the music video itself or the lyrics of a song to relate to another form of media text. In the case of Pharrell Williams' song, 'Yellow Light' with was made for the purpose of a film  i.e. Despicable Me 3. This can be seen though the visuals which have the characters in the movie following him around and multiple shots of them by themselves to further emphasis that the music is related to them. Another example is Michael Jackson's 'Beat It', which was influenced by West Side Story, relating to the ideology of the visuals relating to another media text. Finally, Destiny's Child doing 'Independent Women', relating to the film Charlie's Angels is another example of inter-textual references. 

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VISUALS MATCHING UP WITH LYRICS

Goodwin suggests that visuals in music videos match up with the lyrics. This can be seen clearly and effectively, through J. Cole's video, 'Wet Dreamz'. Here, J. Cole makes constant reference to him being in contact with the female and talking to her. This is clearly depicted through the video, although with the use of dogs, where we can clearly see them interacting and getting to know each other. He uses words such as "Sex" and "Kissing/Touching" which is denoted in the video through the dogs. Through this example, we can clearly see an example of Goodwin's theory at work. Another example is Beyoncé's video 'Irreplaceable'.

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(Another narrative type of video)

GOODWIN'S THEORY

According to Goodwin, there are five key aspects of music videos:

• Genre conventions/ Iconography,

• Visuals match up with lyrics,

• Visuals match up with music,

• Star representation

• Notions of looking

• Narrative based