Music videos and their visual choices have always exemplified the common themes and aesthetics of media production of their time. The relationship between sound and visual effects is significant, and as Michael Chion states, sound is often supplementary to traditional film; therefore, secondary to the visual. This paradigm is challenged with modern music videos, however, as the visual aesthetic are usually determined by the song itself. For example, Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of my Head” music video is an illustration of the repetitive, obsessive lyrical themes of her song itself. The use of hypnotic, futuristic visual techniques perpetuate a feeling of inescapable obsession and futuristic themes. For example, geometric frames and repeated dance moves in her choreography make the audience feel as though they are looped in the video, and even convey a feeling of surrealism. The colours are restricted to a minimal palette of mainly silver, white and red, with strange silhouettes and shapes being used in digital set design.

Furthermore, in 1981, MTV was launched. This elevated the overall concept of music videos, providing a higher budget & higher quality tools to produce music videos. They became cultural phenomena, producing aesthetics which would be well received by young groups in society — they commonly articulated the popular fashion, design and emotions of many audiences at the time. As a result, Chion’s paradigm of audiovisual content is debatable in this sphere of music media production. Rather than sound effects and music adding to a film or visual project, it is instead the determining factor for what themes and techniques should be applied to each video. If a song conveys a certain type of feeling, the aesthetic of the video must match that feeling. In my example, this feeling is hypnotic obsession over somebody.

EVE MCCABE EAGER