Andrew Goodwin Blogging Task.

Andrew Goodwin feels that traditional analyses (using ideas such as todorov) don't really apply to pop videos. This isn't because pop videos are trying to be innovative or experimental; they approach narrative from a diffrent perspective and angle compared to novels and films. There are some reasons behind this:

1) Pop videos are built around the song, which do not have traditional narrative structures.

2) The Pop video often uses the singer as both a narrator and a character.

3) The singer often looks directly at the character - This is an extension of performance and tyring to invole the viewer at home with the performance they're creating.

Pop videos rely on repetition. Often, the video repeats images in the way that the song repeats chourses or lines. Also, this repetition in songs of parts or rhythms of other songs means that we become familiar with the genre and then we have expectations of how the genre creates it's videos.

Pop songs and videos have an ending to them. It's the single that the video is based around and therefore must also have an ending, which is often reflected in the structure of the music, it builds to a climax, before fading and ending.

Some videos are autonomous from the music that was created for them; a video for a song may go completely beyond the original meaning and create a new, deeper meaning for the audience. Sometimes, the video provides a visual pleasure which encourages viewing the video over and over, which in turn promotes the song and the artist's music. Sometimes the song/video is synergous and therefore promoting something other than the song/video itself. Therefore it can be said that there are just more than one relationship between songs and videos: Illustration, Amplification and Disjuncture. (See post on Illustration, Amplification and Disjuncture for meanings and examples.)

Pop videos often have easily recognisable features (An example, Hayley Williams for Paramore's coloured tape around her microphones in Paramore's Videos) Another feature is the way women are presented as objects of male desire. This is particularly true of hip hop and heavy metal videos. In some videos the different instruments in the music are represented by different objects. Also, videos try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, without alienating the core target audience. Videos which feature older bands often show them in their older days, usually so an older audience can sill identify with them. Finally, Videos that are from songs made for movies often (Usually all of the time) include and incorparate images an clips from the movie.