Visuals and Sounds

The Importance of Matching Visuals to Sounds

In one of our first media lessons we studied a few different music videos to try and establish the importance of linking sounds to visuals. 

The first music video that we looked at was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. When watching the video we noticed that when the music was similar to choir music, the artists were shown in a diamond shape, with only their faces showing. 

When this chorus became louder we could see more people; this means that what we could see (lots of people) would match with the louder vocals which we could hear. 

In contrast to this, when we the music became rockier, we could see a live performance of the song. This meant that as soon as the audience heard the guitar coming back in they would know to expect the video to cut back to the live performance as it matches the faster pace of the song. 

Another music video that we looked at was I Got You by Duke Dumont. The video is entirely narrative based and it shows a man who goes into a virtual world via the use of a helmet. In this world the video shown is entirely from the man’s point of view and we follow him as he has lots of different experiences. In the virtual world it is summery and lots of the scenes show the man at parties, at the beach or with a girl. The music is upbeat and exciting which fits with the idea of the man being shown doing lots of exciting activities. Also, within the song we can hear steel drums, which are often associated with summer. This means that what we expect to see from the sounds we can hear, which is an upbeat, exciting and summery music video, is shown. 

From these two examples, a strong link between the sounds we can hear and what we can see is shown.