Narrative of video- planning

As our video is going to be a narrative video we have looked at narrative theories and how we will apply them to our music video.

One of the main theorists when it comes to narrative is Todorov. He stated that all media texts should have an Equilbrium - the norm at the beginning of the piece, Disruption - something which disturbs the initial equillibrium and a Re-equillibrium - the norm at the end of the piece.
We have structured the narrative of our video to link in with Todorov's theories. The shot at the beginning of our video acts as an equillibrium. The equillibrium for our artist is him lying on the ground. The disruption of the equillibrium occurs as the section of our video in which we enter the mind of the artist and experience the conflicts and wierd thoughts which are actually ocurring. The re-equillibrium at the end of our video is the section in which we are shown an extreme close up of the artists eye opening. This is an indicator that we are no longer in the mind of the artist and are back in the real world. In our music video, our re-equillibrium is in fact a reinstatement of the inital equillibrium shown in the opening of our video.

Another narrative theorist who we have looked at when creating our video is Propp. Propp came up with the theory that every media text has certain set characters who have a specific role within the media text. The characters do not necessarily appear as people, but can also be objects or themes.

Hero - the central protagonist who must complete a quest - in our video this is the artist, his quest being to find peace in his mind.
Princess - the reward for the hero for completing the quest - in our video, the princess is the ending where we are released from the madness of his mind.
Villain - the person who tries to stop the hero from completing the quest - in our video, there are several villains. The villains are all of the disturbing images and scenes through each of the doors.
Donor - a character who gives the hero important information to complete the quest.
Helper - the character who helps the hero complete his mission
Father figure - character who acts as a father for the hero
False hero - character who appears as a hero, but is not actually.

Not all narratives have the inclusion of all of the generic characters. As the narrative of our video is not immediately obvious, it has been difficult for us to include all of the characters.

Barthes was a media theorist who came up with the idea that all media texts contain enigmas - questions raised about the narrative. In our video, the strange narrative raises a lot of enigmas, such as:-
'What is going on?'
'Why is there someone dressed as a lion?'
'What's behind the next door?'
Not all of the enigmas in our video are answered and this is partly due to our brand image. We don't want the audience to necessarily understand the narrative, because one of the important things about our brand image is that our artist is mysterious and these unanswered enigmas reinforce this idea.

Levi-strauss stated in his theories that in every narrative, there are conflicts and opposing ideas. Some of the conflicts in our video are :-
Sanity vs Insanity
Light vs Dark
Dreams vs Reality

Narrative videos also sometimes contain narrative devices. These include things like voice overs, flash backs and flash forwards. Narrative devices are used to help convey the narrative or the storyline to an audience. We felt however, that it would not necessarily be effective for our brand image and the message of our video. We want to keep the idea of confusion and mystery, because we are trying to give the idea of someone going slightly mad and so the weird, disjointed structure of the narrative is not designed to make sense.

Target audience theories

Maslow's Hierarchy of needs


By Evie