Adorno and Horkheimer

Adorno and Horkheimer are German theorists who came up with the theory of the Culture Industry. Adorno and Horkheimer claim that the media create products and services to meet demands of its audiences and to suit their type of target audiences. The media knows that its audience will want to buy products and they therefore mass produce products for consumers to buy them.

Whether it is TV entertainment, News, Film Industry or Music Industry, they all show traits of using the culture theory in order to make more money as they know consumers will buy products related to their industry. Music artists create products for its consumers to buy, Drake is a Hip Hop artist who has T-shirts with his record label on it to promote himself and to make more profits as well as expanding his fanbase. Drake promotes these products through marketing, he markets and advertises his shirts on his music videos and on is websites to show his fans that they can buy these products. The people wearing the shirts will then automatically promote the artist for free as they are walking around with the logo on the shirt which other people see and it expands Drakes audience and fanbase because of the power of word of mouth.

These large companies produce products and then promote it to the audience in a way to make the audience feel they need this product. This makes them buy the product as they make it appealing and they make the product feel like it is most wanted.

Music Video - Technical Codes and Goodwin's Theory

Technical Codes

Cinematography
As with all moving images in media, the camera plays a big role. How the image is displayed and sequenced has a significant impact on the meaning and on how the audience feel when watching the video.

Camera Movement: The angle and shot distance all needs to be analysed. The camera needs to have movement and shots for actions in the music video such as walking and dancing with choreography. Music videos would have close ups and show emphasised shots of the artist.

Editing
The most common form of editing associated with music videos are fast cuts and montages. Rendering music videos this way is to make the audience miss what happens in the video due to its fast pace. This will cause the audience to watch the video again which will generate more views. Some videos have slow pace and greater transitions to establish the mood.

Chroma key: The green/blue screen ca be used to create music videos nowadays. It is now easier and quicker to make music videos with modern technology.

Andrew Goodwin's writing in "Dancing in the Distraction Factory" showed his Theory

Goodwin had 8 main principles in his theory.

1. Links between Lyrics and visuals
2. Links between music and visuals (Complimentary, Contradicting or Amplification).
3. Genre Characteristics ( e.g Stage Performance, Dance Routine)
4. Intertextual Reference
5. Notions of looking (Objectification of women)
6. Voyeurism (direct gaze, other people looking at artist, insight into artist life, screen and mirrors) 
7. Demands of the record label (Representations of the artist such as close ups)
8. Performance based, Narrative based or Concept based music videos.