Key features of music videos

Following my research into music videos, it has been made clear to me that they work around three codes; music, lyrics and iconography (visuals). The way to understand how music videos work is to look at the relationship between these codes. The relationship between them can either be amplified, contradicting (disjunctive) or illustrative. These three are designed to provide pleasure towards to audience in order to keep their eyes fixed on the screen and to excite them, resulting in them watching the video again or perhaps telling another person about this video, advertising the artist to others.

An example of where the relationship between the music and the visuals is amplified is a video by Nero called 'Crush on You':

In this video, the narrative is about 4 girls all having a crush on the same boy. The emotions that the boy is feeling from all these girls having a 'crush' on him is exaggerated and is shown by using a red tint over the moving images, illustrating anger or fear. It also flashes and has lightning effects over the girls with emphasises the power the all the girls have over the male character. These visual amplifies the music of this video.

An example of a music video that has a contradicting relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is one by Basshunter called 'Now You're Gone':

This music video is telling the story of a couple who have just broken up, and the lyrics are sung by a man regretting the break up as he misses the female now shes out of his life. However, the visuals tell a different story. The audience are able to see the female with her friends having a good time dancing in a club, and jump cuts are used to show the man having a laugh with his mates in the same club. Despite the lyrics being slightly depressing and full of regret, it shows both male and female having a good time. At the end of the video the audience get to see the couple kissing on the dancefloor in the club, therefore it is clear that the lyrics completely contradict the visuals.

An example of a music video that has an illurative relationship between the lyrics and visuals is 'Stacy's Mom' by Fountains of Wayne:

In this music video, the visuals go along with the literal meaning of the lyrics. For example, when the lyrics say, 'we can hang around by the pool', there are a male and a female character messing around by a pool. Another example of this is when the lyrics say, 'do you remember when I mowed your lawn?' and as this is sung, a male is mowing someones lawn. In this case, the fact that the visuals are illustrating the lyrics help the audience to understand the story which may be confusing if the visuals were not illustrative. Also, there are sexual parts to the video, which follows Goodwin's theory of voyeurism in music videos, which pleases the audiences and therefore persuades them to watch on.