Narrative

I am going to discuss theories of narrative in relation to my advanced portfolio whereby I produced a music video for Matthew Perryman Jones alternative pop song ‘Save You.’ The music video is a period piece set In the 1940’s and is based on a couple separated as the male character leaves for war.

The narrative for our music video is very interesting as on reflection I noted that it conforms to various theories of narrative. The structure of our narrative is Non linear leaving the audience to conclude the narrative by themselves. The narrative is structured using in Media- Res and a variety of flashbacks which drop subtle hints throughout the video before the closed structure which reveals the tragic end. Boardwell and Thompson once mentioned “the relationship between charcters is shaped by structure of the text.” This can be seen throughout the video due to specific editing techniques and ordering of clips, for example flash backs and slow motion. Our video conforms to this statement as the close relationship of the pair is revealed through a stream of flashbacks which push the narrative forwards and allows the audience to begin to puzzle the narrative together through a variety of codea. Roland Barthes theorised the 5 code rule of narrative, and our music video conforms to this theory. There are many symbolic codes that hint the male characters death throughout the narrative without being explicit. Solving the narrative conforms to the enigma code whilst The semantic code comes into place as the female character prepares for a funeral, the objects surrounding her such as the funeral fascinator give speculation towards a funeral. The female character is filmed walking through a graveyard into a church; the church is a figure of representation of death. The female reads a letter and the camera focuses on the words ‘KILLED IN ACTION’ which applies to the action code due to the specific words. The fact that the video is set during the second world war and the male is going off to war already suggests to the audience that death is an inevitable tragedy due to the negative connotations of war, this makes connections with the word outside of our music video (cultural code.)  The reason we chose to use a non linear narrative was to create audience speculation keeping them intrigued while also allowing them to  unfold the narrative providing emotional responses. Katy Perrys music video for ‘Thinking of You’ was a huge influence to our music video following a similar non chronological structure however was more explicit as it showed the death of her partner unlike ours making her video conform further to a closed structure.

The theory of binary opposition founded by Levi strauss is conformed to within our music video but also challenged due to the fact the video is through a female perspective yet the song is sung by a male. The reasons that the theory of binary opposition is applied in our narrative is the fact that the male is leaving to fight in the war, signifying strength and dominance yet the woman is left at home feeling weak and vulnerable. The theory of binary opposition is challenged in modern society due to the uprising of feminism, for example in the video ‘Stupid Girls’ by pink there are themes of empowerment through the binary oppositions of two types of women rather than a male and female and suggests females should be strong and powerful .Our music video conforms to the theory of binary opposition as it is the perspective of a female therefore audience are passively made to sympathise with her and her loss, this in turn hyperbolises her vulnerability.

Andrew Goodwin theorised five key aspects; The protagonist being the centre of attention, a relationship between the song and visuals, thought through beat, narrative and performance of the song and technical aspects of the video. Our video both conforms to and subverts this theory. The female protagonist is the camera focus, and there is a relationship between the songs meaning and the visuals presented in the music video. Thought through beat is signified in our video as the lyrics create a story and the narrative of our video reveals a story. For example the lyrics of the song goes ‘too many years of dying’ as the camera focuses on a picture of the deceased male character. The way in which we challenge Goodwins theory is we do not represent the artist within the video and the protagonist is not the artist singing. This is because the song is sung by a male and our main character is female. Within real media texts this is also found such as In Ed Sheerans ‘Lego House’ music video where the protagonist is an actor hired to play the artist.  Once again we conform to Goodwins final aspect which suggests that lighting and colour contribute to the mood of the video categorising the narrative. The use of mise- en- scene allows the audience to make presumptions of how the narrative will unfold.

The music video completely disregards Todorov’s theory of equilibrium. This is due to its non chronological structure. The narrative ends negatively, and this does create a higher emotional response.  The music video subverts Todorov’s theory of equilibrium because we used in-media -res and therefore the narrative doesn’t follow a solid structure like how todorov theorised.

To conclude I believe that the most influential theories in the construction of our narrative were Andrew Goodwin and Roland Barthes.