The Narrative (Planning)

What is a narrative?
A narrative has 5 steps in it:

• Equilibrium or normality.
• Disruption of the equilibrium.
• Recognition of the disruption.
• Attempts to repair the disruption.
• return to the equilibrium/normality.

Vladimir Propp was a Russian critic and folklorist, he grouped characters and actions in narratives into seven character roles or 'spheres of a action' and 31 functions that motivate the story.

The character roles are:

• Hero
• Defeats the villain and restores normality and wins the love of the heroine.
• Villain
• Cause of the disruption.
• Dispatcher
• Sends the hero on his journey to restore normality.
• Donor
• Gives the hero something to help him on his journey.
• Helper
• Assists the hero in restoring the normality.
• Heroine
• Usually a passive and/or vulnerable character.
• False hero
• a character who seems to be on the side of the hero but isn't.

Planning and deciding our narrative took a long time to decide this is because we weren't too sure on what our song was about. Also when one person gave an idea another didn't agree and vise versa with other ideas. First off we decided to get the lyrics and get an idea from each line. i tried to get the lyrics but couldn't find the song online or any where so Hannah manged to listen to the song and type out the lyrics. Once she had done this we looked at each line and tried to figure out what it meant and where it could be filmed. Some lines were obvious like, 'Look for answers in your glass, Trying to run away from your past' we thought this was drinking due to the glass bit and 'run away from your past' seemed like obsessive drinking and trying to forget what happened.'I watch you stumble and fall down, Knocking your head too hard on the ground, You open your eyes to the sky, I'm gonna spit spit spit yeah, right in your eye'. We believed that this line was about a person standing up for themselves but we couldn't think of a narrative that matched the idea of this at this moment in time. 

Our first idea was that there be just a female singer and no band this was due to lack of people we couldn't get to be in the band. But she would change roles in some parts she would be in a white dress and have a strong role and a forgiving nature and in other parts of the song she would be in black and have a more negative approach to everything. But after careful planning we believed we wouldn't be able to pull this off and have a great music video.

Our second idea was to not to have a narrative and to just have a performance song like some other rock bands do for example one band and their song is 'DragonForce' 'through the fire and the flames' but i was one of the people who didn't like this idea. This was because i see performance music videos as a way to show of the artists talent but not all of us could play an instrument properly. Once we tried to film this we decided it wasn't going to be a good idea.

Finally; we came up with the idea of the girl is getting bullied but we didn't know by who. we wanted to get a guy to bully and pressure the girl but we couldn't think of any one we knew who would have a lot of time free to help us so we decided to base the song around school and bullying in school.

By Louise Thorne

Textual analysis of a music video

We were given a sheet on how to structure an essay for textual analysis. The music video i choice was November Rain by Guns n Roses. One of the paragraphs was to include the relationship between lyrics and visuals, this is to identify ways in which the lyrics and illustrations are shown. This can be either amplified and/or contradicted by the visuals.

The next paragraph was about the relationship between music and visuals, this can be about the visuals cutting to the beat, a colour change to the beat. Or any solo instrumental bits illustrated by the video and if the video changes pace with the music. For example does the video have long cuts if it's slow music then get quicker when the beat picks up.

The the next paragraph is about close ups and the artist as a star image. So this is how the record company would sell the artist for example, the Kylie Minougue video has her in a very revealing white dress this will sell her to a male audience because of the use of voyeurism. What image the artist/ band is being offered and how the video and artists relate to previous videos and artists.

Next paragraph is about the reference to the notion of looking. Do you get the sense that the artist is on sexual display or are other people in the video sue in this way. Does the camera, costumes, dance or anything else imply sexualised display and are there any other references to 'looking such as screens with screens or binoculars, cameras etc.

The next paragraph is about intertextuality references basically saying does this video remind you of another video. This can be by the camera work or the same setting or similar costumes.

The next paragraph is about the music video performance-based, narrative-based or concept-based. How much of each is shown if all used and finally end it with a conclusion. Some sections of this essay plan we used to plan our music video like the visuals to music. We could have a glass in shot when the word glass is used and we can use the music to visuals and edit to the beat of the song when its very up beat at the chorus.

By louise Thorne