Andrew Goodwin, a director of music, came up with theories which feature in his book about purposes and features for music videos. His theory is generally based around 6 main principles..
- Links between lyrics and visuals, when the words directly link to the video.
- Genre characteristics, the visual representations of the music genre and portrayal.
- Demands from the record label, how the artist is represented through the need of close ups of the artist and may even create motifs which occur frequently throughout their work.
- Performance based, narrative based or concept based music videos.
- Reference to notions of looking, mostly of voyeuristic treatment towards the female body.
- Intertextual reference, the reference to other videos, media texts, artists or products within a video.
- Links between music and videos, the instruments, cutting rate (on the beat) and if the link is complementary or contradicting.
- Voyeurism (insight into artists life, direct gaze, other people looking at the artist, mirrors and screens).
