Linking our video to Goodwin’s Theory

Evaluation question 1

Structure In his theory, he states that there are three possible structures

for a music video: narrative, performance or conceptual. Our video chose mainly the narrative strand as we wanted to tell a story, however, our story is anything but straightforward……

The conceptual part of our video adds a depth to the video giving us an insight on the human psyche: we struggle to make decisions. By having time reverse and the sequence replay with an alternate outcome (what happens if she doesn’t take the alcohol), it requires the viewer to use their brain a bit more to realize what is going on. Most music videos don’t have this depth to them so we developed this convention to combine both narrative and conceptual elements into something far more superior and engaging.

In my opinion, the narrative could be stronger in places such as during long periods of lip-synching where the story is slightly lost. The bad acting too slightly detaches from the realness of the narrative.

Visual, lyrical and music links

Goodwin’s theory states that there are links between the lyrics and music with the visuals and we certainly kept to this convention to help strengthen our narrative and foreshadow events. For example, when the girl looks down the lyrics say ‘staring at the floor’ and this double reinforcement of visuals and lyrics imply that she is very lonely. Moreover, the whole colour grading of the visuals match the dreamlike theme of the song as the haziness and washed out colours make the visuals seem more surreal, much like the music. This is where the visuals and music is linked.

Here she is ‘staring at the floor’

However, at some points we challenged the conventions by having lyrics that counterbalance what is seen on screen. For example, when the lyrics say ‘now I’m drunker than before’, the girl actually rejects the alcohol meaning that the lyrics and visuals don’t match up. We did however purposely intend to do this as it is almost representative of teenagers constant changing of opinions and it is almost as if her subconscious is telling her something and she doesn’t take notice.

Genre characteristics Genre characteristics are key in our video, a convention not to

be missed. We have a hazy colour scheme, this idea bout light vs dark in terms of the narrative and lip-synching scenes and the themes behind the story (love, betrayal and alcoholism). These are commonly found in indietronica videos as discovered in the research and planning stage. However, we developed this convention by adding some more features from other genres. Jump cuts and quick editing are often used in Dubstep style genres but we borrowed this to help aid our narrative to show the speed at which she is drinking the alcohol. Although not commonly found in the indietronica genre, this type of editing was used and necessary to strengthen the visuals and narrative.

The use of jump cuts adds to the intensity of the drinking.

Intertextuality Intertextuality is a controversial point since I

personally don’t feel that this is a convention of music videos. While Goodwin does state that not all music videos use all of his key points, they do use some so it can be true to say that a few video do use this. Ours for example does………to an extent. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this is 100% an intertextual reference, but the split decision concept is a nod to the movie Sliding Doors which is where we got the idea from (some of our audiences picked up on this). While it is a similar idea, we developed this convention by rather than being literally referenced, it has subtly been integrated to or narrative so it could be missed by others. This is a debatable point. Did we really use intertextuality or did we use a similar idea to another form of media?

Notions of lookingUs as the audience have a challenging

representation of goodwins ‘notions of looking’ idea. In out video, we have the point of view of an outsider, but not the min character so therefore we have a very interesting notion of looking. Focusing equally on mise-en-scene and people, it has been very clear what we are supposed to understand from the notions of looking. For example, the girls sad expression followed by the couple kissing indicate that she is dissapointed by this outcome.

Voyeurism Voyeurism is again another idea that we challenged, and I mean

REALLY challenged. Artists are normally represented in a voyeuristic or sexual manner, but our artist is instead represented in a mysterious way. Up until 40 seconds in, we don’t see his face so it is much like the lead singer is the ‘magical helper’ as mentioned in Vladamir Propp’s theory, so we have not represented him sexually at all. Moreover, even when the lip-synching is on screen, he is not extremely voyeuristic (this is partly due to the dark background) and so by challenging this convention we have given the artistic a kind of ‘cult’ representation where it is up to the audience to decide on his character. While I think that we have done this successfully, I think that there will be some people (mainly fans) that think that he has been presented in a voyeuristic manner due to his stylish clothing. We don’t see his face until the lip

synching scenes. Despite this, his face is never fully seen when he interacts with the other people.

Demands of the record Label

The demand of the record label is perhaps the hardest to pinpoint. Passion pit have had multiple representations in their existing videos, often just the lead singer being shown in the videos themselves. We haven’t challenged this at all since it would hinder the narrative if the whole band showed up at the party. That’s just comedic.