Narrative

“Media texts rely on cultural experiences in order for audiences to easily make sense of narratives”.

Explain how you used conventional and / or experimental narrative approaches in one of your production pieces.

As my music video is focused on my artist performing some of the narrative theories do not apply to my video. The first theorist which I found that did not apply was Propp who studied the narrative structures of Russian Folk Tales and said that regardless of the individual differences in terms of plot, characters and settings, such narratives would share common structural features. I also found that Todorov who was a Bulgarian structural linguist, interested in the way language is ordered to infer particular meanings and has been very influential in the field of narrative theory.

 

I believe that Roland Barthes is a theorist which supports my music video I am making. Bathes was a French Literary critic who proposed that in any narrative there are 5 ‘codes’ at play in a narrative. I believe that my video follows ‘The Hermeneutic Code’ in which this refers to enigmas or questions that a reposed throughout the narrative. A story will often throw up questions which aren’t immediately answered. Part of the enjoyment of narratives is when the audience is allowed to make assumptions about what could happen.  My video will follow this as the audience will think about what may happen next.

I also found that Andrew Goodwin’s theory applies to my music video. This is because I believe that through the video there is a strong link between the lyrics and the visuals of the song. His theory also discovered that music videos demonstrate genre characteristics where in my video I am able to use location and narrative. Through the locations which I have shown in my video this clearly highlights the genre of music along with the clothing and styling of my artist which reinforces this. The close up shots which I regularly use in my video is also another key feature of Goodwin’s theory of music video.