Goodwin's Theories: Our Video

After carrying out research into Andrew Goodwin's theories at the beginning of this process, we kept them in mind throughout the completion of our music video. We thought that it would be valuable to reflect on the ways that our video does/does not conform to Goodwin's theories post the completion of the final draft of our video. Unfortunately, Caitlin was unable to attend on this day to contribute to the discussion. 

In our music video, we used Goodwin's concepts of illustration and amplification, and we did not touch upon the concept of disjuncture.

After filming this video, I realised that we had only touched upon one area of Goodwin's theory; whether the lyrics of the song matched the visuals of our music video. We had, in fact, not discussed genre conventions, the visuals matching the music, star representation and voyeurism/'the notion of looking'.

Genre conventions: I believe our video conformed to Goodwin's theory of genre conventions partly, as there are many indie/alternative music videos that are narrative music videos. An example of this is the music video for "If They Only Knew" by Alfie Arcuri:

However, we did not include lip syncing in our video, which are common features in music videos of the indie genre. We decided that we did not want to include lip syncing, as we wanted to focus more heavily on the narrative of our piece. Due to us tackling the topical issue of LGBT+ relationships in our narrative, we wanted the video to solely focus on this, to highlight its importance. We felt that including lip syncing would be including it when it was not necessary, and we felt as though it would not add any value to our video.

Visuals matching the music: I believe our video did conform to this element of Goodwin's theory, as I believe that the visuals of our music video did match the music. Particularly towards the end of the piece, beginning most prominently during the argument scene, the shots in our music video are fitting to the chosen song. In the argument scene, Hannah intentionally lined up the footage where her arms rise, to coincide with the lyric "maybe". Additionally, in the montage of the shots of Jade and Hannah, it was closely edited to make sure that the shots transitioned on the beat of the song. We also managed to subtly line up movements of the characters heads and eyes to comply with the beat/rhythm of the song. We focused more on this in the second half of the video, as it helped with the build up of the narrative, as it added more of an impact to the section due to it being more pleasing to the senses of the viewer.

Star representation: We did not conform to Goodwin's theory of star representation, as we did not have a celebrity/well-known individual in our music video. It was not featured in our video in any way; not through costume, movements or appearances.

Voyeurism/'The notion of looking": I do not believe our music video includes any voyeuristic treatment/objectification of women, so it does not conform to this aspect. Voyeurism would have had no contribution to the narrative of our video, and therefore, it was unnecessary for us to use this. Additionally, as it was a piece created for school, we did not feel voyeuristic features would be appropriate. 

However, our piece does conform to "the notion of looking", as we include multiple shots of Hannah looking at herself in the mirror. The mirrors, and filming the protagonists in them, are representative of the notion of looking.