Analysis - Steve Archer

Steve Archer is a theorist who talked about 'Music Television 2 - How To Study'.

Archer said that there are five points to judge a music video and to tell whether is is good and works for the target audience or not.

The first point is: Thought Provoking Music. Thought provoking music is about closing your eyes and listening to the music and thinking about what you can hear and what images come into your head as you listen to it.

Archers second point was: Narrative and Performance. He says that songs rarely tell complete narratives and that we are used to studying them with other visual texts. Usually, if we detect a story in a music video, we suspect some sort of drama is going to unfold.

The third point is: Star Image. Archer says that only 1 in 10 acts that are put out by the music industry actually make any money. He says that Image is important as image makes money. Without a good image, artists or bands can struggle to make money as people aren't interested, even if their music is good.

Arches fourth point is: Three ways in which music videos relate visuals to the song. We can identify three ways in which music videos work to support or promote a song. These are Illustration, Amplification and Disjuncture. These help generalise the effect of individual music videos.

Archers last point was: Technical Aspect of music videos. This is about analyising the video through camerawork, camera movements, camera angles, mise-en-scene, editing and sound. Camerawork allows us to see how professional and well constructed a video is. The camera movements and angles also help us see how well constructed the video is. Mise-en-scene allows us to see what the video is about and how well it works with location, lighting, props and costumes. Editing allows us to see how well the edits have been put together and whether they match or not and the sound allows us to see how thew lip synching matched the track.