You can refer to Goodwin when answering Q1 in your Evaluation

Andrew Goodwin in his book Dancing in the Distraction Factory writes about what he defines as the characteristics of music videos.

How have you used Goodwin's definition of a music video as you've created your own video?

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics

(e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band)

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals

(either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)

3. There is a relationship between the music and visuals

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artists and the artist may develop motifs which reoccur across their work (a visual style)

5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes etc and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body) 

6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV  programmes, other music videos etc)

Several of you have mentioned 'The Gaze' in your analysis. Here's a reminder of theories

The Gaze

Extra-diegetic gaze, where the person depicted in the text looks at the spectator, such as an aside, or an acknowledgement of the “fourth wall”.

The camera's gaze which is the gaze of the camera, and is often equated to the director's gaze.

Intra-intra-diegetic gaze, such as Lady Gaga watching herself on TV screen in a music video

It has been proposed (principally by Laura Mulvey, 1975) that, because filmmakers are predominately male, the presence of women in film is often solely for the purposes of display (rather than for narrative purposes)

The purpose of this display, it is argued, is to facilitate a voyeuristic response in the spectators: which presumes a ‘male gaze’ (regardless of gender of spectator)

This ‘male gaze’ is one that, or may feel like, a powerful controlling gaze at the female on display

This female is effectively objectified and passive

Despite many subsequent detractions and revisions of ‘gaze theory,’ in its simplest form, is thought-provoking in the context of representation* in music videos

Andrew Goodwin argues that the female performer is frequently objectified in this fashion…

...often through a combination of camerawork and editing w fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star.

 

The idea becomes more complex when we see the male body on display – the post-feminist ‘female gaze’ where women are no longer just objects of the look but exercise some power by looking at men as objects too.

 

Madonna, Open Your Heart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7JMXYoTj8I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The idea of voyeurism is also frequently evident in music video through a system of screens within screens – characters watching performers or others on television, via webcams, as images on video camera screen or CCTV within the world of the narrative. 

 

 

 The proliferation of such motifs has

 reached a point where it has become almost an obsession in  music promos

George Michael: Outside

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

Lady Gaga, Telephone

Machimima is the ‘homemade’ version: an example of one individual’s dedication to Gaga AND animation

 

 

 

 

In male performance videos too, the voyeuristic treatment of the female body is often apparent, with the use of dancers as adornments to the male star ego

50Cent/Snoop Dogg: P.I.M.P

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