Interaction With The Audience

Serious attempts have been made to emulate the films; Madonna employed both a movie director and actor Christopher Walken for the clip for Bad Girl (1992), while David Lynch was employed to direct Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy in 1990. The trouble is, as is the case with the clips taken from movies, is that the music has very little to do with the images presented. Andrew Goodwin states that "songs are not the movies". He argues that music videos should incorporate lip-synchronization so the performer is addressing the viewer directly, as apposed to the distance between actor and audience in a movie, brought about by ignoring the camera in an attempt to act "more natural". This brings a voyeuristic quality to watching movies that doesn't manifest itself in music video, where lip-synching sees to embrace the viewer, bringing them into the action. An example is Massive Attack's Protection (1995) set in an apartment block, into which we are looking from the outside. Any feeling of intrusion is calmed by the regular appearence of Tracey Thorn who seems to sing directly to us.

Massive Attack - Protection