Research: Conventions of Music Videos

Sia- Elastic Heart

Released in 2013

Genre - Electropop

Length - 4minutes 18seconds 

Awards -  MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video

The video for this song is quite confusing as it shows a young girl and older man together dancing in a cage. But after doing some research into not only the song but the music video I found that the whole song is about the man and the young girl is one of his inner demons. Furthermore the reason for them dancing in the cage is to represent the man head and how everything is so crazy and how he is dealing with so much.

The actual video consists of a lot of dancing and through this a story is being told. I found this music very moving and different and although the video had a negative response as many people thought it was wrong for such a young girl to be in a cage with an older man and didn't really understand the concept of the video.

 However, when Sia saw these comments she came back and made sure she got across the real message of the song and the video and after myself researching into it all i found that i could really understand the song and the video. 

Andrew Goodwin's Key features of music videos:

Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.

There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.

There is a relationship between the music and lyrics.

There must be loads of close ups of the artist.

Reference to the motion of looking.

I feel that all the music videos i have watched and analysed follows Goodwin's conventions and because of this makes each of them very successful. I plan on myself following these conventions as by doing this i will be able to create a successful end product, in addition all of Goodwin's points fit in together so if i do one of them it only makes sense to do the rest such as using a close up of my artist and use this as a motion of the audience looking at her in a sexual way (Male Gaze).