Andrew Goodwin Theory part 2

Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.

The music video for word play does demonstrate genre characteristics, it falls under one of the rock sub genres. The genre rarely have any dancers in the music video, it often has band performance and tells a narrative just like the music video word play.

There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.

http://www.metrolyrics.com/wordplay-lyrics-jason-mraz.html

The relationship between the lyrics and visuals can be described as illustrative and amplifying. The lyrics talk about the people who dislike him or his music and how he aint about to change it, it talks about how his just not a one hit wonder and if you don’t like his music then you can just **********. Lyrics such as “cause they need a new song, like a new religion, music for the television I can’t do the long division someone do the maths” are a good example of the meaning of the song.

 The video starts with Jason Mraz, his band, and a wizard (who magically plays the guitar) all playing their instruments in a field. He is then seen sitting on fallen tree playing his guitar. While he is playing his guitar we see an old man walking by who cannot stand listening to the music he is playing. The old man then begins the process of stoning him. Throughout the video more and more people gather to continue stoning him. The wizard, who is playing the guitar, is actually Jason himself dressed as the wizard. The video then continues to show all of the previous shots. It ends with him extremely injured from being stoned and then fades to black. Both the lyrics and what we see are illustrative, the video tells the story of the lyrics. Also in some parts the relationship is amplifying for example. 

In this part people are throwing rocks at him, the lyrics that you here are Mr. A-Z is all about the wordplay. Its amplifying because its trying to say u can throw whatever you want but Jason Mraz is sticking with the word play, sticking with his own style of music.

There is a relationship between music and visuals.

The relationship between the music and visuals are illustrative, what we here is the guitar and the drums, keyboard etc. In the music video we also see these instruments and many more, the beat of the of song is not slow but quite up beat, its illustrative because if you were just to watch the video without the music you would expect to hear the guitar and all the other instrument because we see them within the music video. 

 

The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style). 

tthrough out the video we get lots of close up this is help the mraz creat his own visual style also towards the end we get more close up of his face to show all the bruises and cuts from people throwing stones at him

There is frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

It is common to have a voyeuristic treatment of the female body, however the genre of the music video doesn’t treat women objectively or in a sexual way, this tends to be more common among R&B and Hip Hop videos etc.

The music video does have a notion of looking however its not screen with screen, mirrors or telescope etc. It has the musician directly looking in to the camera in a lot of the shots; this is because the song is technically to word the audience.

There is often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc).

This music video does have intertextual references, it is influenced by the film the wizard of oz