Narrative

Narrative is defines as, “a chain of events in a cause and effect relationship occurring in time.” For my A2 Media Studies coursework my group and I created a music video based on a song by The Jane Bradfords. The narrative of our music video reflects the genre of music that it is in, alternative, opening up with an abstract view of seemly random lights and faces. This gives the audience a very restricted narration and only offers minimal information regarding the plot of the music video. However, as the video continues the narrative becomes less restricted, opening the audience to the plot between the two characters and the story that the music video is portraying.
This abstract video at the beginning was shot with the characters interacting with the camera, for example, smiling and laughing while looking at the camera, holding it and passing it back and forth between the two characters. This was to create the “home movie” effect to set up the running narrative for the video, comparing memory to reality.
Throughout our music video, we maintain awareness of Barthes’ codes, which are woven into any narrative.
We decided to create this abstract look during the editing process to symbolise how memories are very different from reality, as the colours are always brighter in our minds than in reality, which is especially the case for these characters as the video continues.
Opening the music video up to this abstract video play to Barthes’s first code, The Hermeneutic code. This creates a sense of mystery as the audience does not know fully what they are seeing, however the effect of the blurred lights dulls down after a few seconds be enter into Barthes’ second code by introducing the audience to the two characters, this is referred to as Semantic code.
After the opening scenes, we begin to give the audience some subjective character identification, allowing them access to what these two characters see and do, such as the male character avoiding talking to the female character and ignoring her when playing his games console. Allowing this subjective character identification lays the foundation for what will develop in the plot later in the music video. In showing this we have gone against Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of narrative, as without stating the equilibrium be have shown a disruption of the equilibrium by the male lead acting this way towards the female lead.
This subjective character identification is further explored as the music video goes on, as the audience see the two main characters fight and the private moments of the male character after this confrontation. This confrontation in the doorway of the females characters house allow for us to build tension and this plays towards the Proairetic code. This refers to any other action or event that indicates something else is going to happen, and which hence gets the audience guessing as to what will happen next. We also use objective character identification by projecting the characters memories on the wall behind him, adding to the flow of the narrative and gives the audience further explanation on what the character is thinking. This is known as a recognition that there has been a disruption, in the theory of narrative. Also, this is another example of Barthes’s narrative theory, as this scene of the memories being projected onto the wall allow for the semantic meanings to become broader and allows for a deeper set of meanings. This is known as the Symbolic code.
Next we show the character writing a letter to the loved one, and in the theory of narrative is known as an attempt to repair the disruption. We then use modular narrative to reflect on our story. Anachronic narrative was used to show the flashbacks of what the male character has went through during the story and we reverse these to symbolise that the male character wants to go back to the way things where.
The music video ends with the female character reading the letter that was left for her, but she throws it away and reaches for the box of her possessions. This goes against Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of narrative as this is not a reinstatement of the equilibrium. For this last scene by using Enigma code, i feel we added to the overall narrative, as we don’t answer the question that the audience will have on their mind, whether the couple got back together or not.
We end the music video with a projection of the memory of our characters and how they interacted with each other, this typically would have been at the beginning of the video as it states the equilibrium however we felt it provided a powerful tool to show the contrast between then and now.
There where some major narrative decisions made during the pre production stage such as deciding to tell the story from the point of view of two relatively young characters. We made this decision as we found during our research that The Jane Bradfords main listener ship was teens to mid-twentys, therefore we decided in the thoughts that the audience may relate better to younger characters. We also decided before shooting not to feature a band in it. Typically in music videos, they would have both a story to the music video but also cut away to the band playing the song as if live, however we felt that we had a big story to tell and just over four minutes to tell it and so if we where to include it we felt it would have taken away from the main story we where trying to tell and take away from the overall narrative of the music video.
Ultimately, the narrative for our A2 piece was the common story of love and loss, however, we have a running narrative of the contrast between memory and reality which is clearly defined at the end of our music video.