Music Video TheoryTHE THEORY BEHIND THE MUSIC VIDEOS.

TheoristsSVEN E CARLSSON, MICHAEL SHORE, ANDREW GOODWIN

Sven E Carlsson Sven E Carlsson said that ‘One of the most common methods of analysis is to break up the music video into black and white boxes. Almost everything is then perceived as opposites – trash or art, commerce or creativity, male or female, naturalism or antirealism, etc. What is being said is the common approach to music videos in the sense that binary opposites drive the narration of the video forward.

Sven E Carlsson believes that there are two categories that music videos are able to fall into: Performance or Conceptual…

Performance videos are when the audience are able to see the artists singing and dancing throughout the video, for example Lady Gaga has mostly performance videos whereas Alt J has much more theatrical videos for example his video for Breezeblocks.

Conceptual videos are when the audience watch something other than the artist throughout the video.

Michael Shore Michael Shore concludes that music video are recycled styles that contains an information overload and therefore contains views of adolescent male fantasies. Most videos contain elements of speed, power, girls and wealth. All this conveys into soft-core pornography with clichéd imagery.

Andrew GoodwinAndrew Goodwin says that these theoretical conclusions are the basis of understanding music videos:Cinematic Genre Advertising Metaphysical PoetryNew Forms Of Television Semiotic Pornography“Electronic Wallpaper” Post-modern PoetryDreams

Roland Barthes Roland Barthes explained that texts may be open or closed. He narrowed down the action of text into five different codes, which are included into any narrative, this includes narrative music videos.

The five codes are:

The hermeneutic Code (HER)

The Enigma/ Proairetic Code (ACT)

The symbolic Code (REF)

The Culture Code (REF)

Roland Barthes The Hermeneutic Code

This is the voice of the supposed truth, HER, is the way the story avoids telling the truth or letting the facts slip. This is to drop clues throughout the video to give it some mystery and makes it very entertaining.

The Enigma

This is the empirical voice, this gives the audience a cliff hanger and is there to build up tension to leave the audience guessing.

Semantic Code

This is the voice of person, this points out that the lyrics may have a hidden meaning.

Symbolic Code

This is the voice of symbols, where meaning arise out of objects, there's shown simplistically but have a much deeper meaning.

Cultural Code

This is the voice of science, this relates to the audience and make the video much more realistic..