1B - Narrative

Friday 30th May 2014:
For narrative I will chose my music video as the product I will discuss in my exam.

Basic outline of my product-

• Establishing shot
• Footsteps to an unknown location
• Guitar and singing sequences
• Tube carriage sequences
• London 
• Bowling
• Location
• Singing and guitar
• Opening birthday presents
• Revealing a photo frame
• Birthday decorations
• Changes to sympathy cards
• Singing and guitar
• Looking back at pictures
• Crying
• Playing the song on computer
• Writing the note
• Flashbacks
• Flowers
• Releasing balloons

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• Narrative explores the genre, character, form and time within a production.
• Different structures can be applied to a media production.
• My product has an open structure where the audience is left to wonder what has occurred during the production.
• It also has a non-linear structure as the events occur in a non-chronological order, including flashbacks and flash-forwards,

• I can apply Barthes' Code theory to my production - I teased the audience by using puzzling shots which did not reveal who my specific characters were - many of the shots were taken from a POV angle so that only body parts such as the hands and arms could be seen, intentionally to not reveal who my characters were. The technique of using snares - a deliberate evasion of the truth - can also be identified within my music video because I deliberately evaded the cause of the girl's death. However, if i criticise my work, I could have used an equivocation to highlight some potential causes to further draw in the attention of the audience - such as shots of a girl in a hospital bed, a crime scene, an overturned bike or car, drugs etc. I also used semantic codes to add more depth and understanding to my narrative plot. Whilst there was no definitive shot that showed that a character had died, I used shots of flowers, old pictures and the cards to connote the idea of someone's passing, as these are all commonly associated with funerals. I could have included shots of people dressed in black, as to a British culture, this can be identified as going to a funeral. However, as a music video, the platform is universal and can be accessed anywhere and by anyone, therefore, to an Chines culture, this representation wouldn't have been clear as combined with the colour white it represents stability (the symbol of Yin and Yang), as well as the element of water, whilst wearing all white would then connote a funeral to the Chinese.

• Different structures of music video, Andrew Goodwin; narrative, performance, conceptual/abstract or a hybrid -  I used a hybrid of performance and narrative.

• Connection with time: I used repetition of the same few scenes such as the location shots to manipulate time as this went hand-in-hand with the theme of my narrative plot - the idea that for some people, time comes to a stop or slow-motion when you lose someone close to you, as you are stuck in a space of emotion but everyone around you carries on with there normal lives. I also used flashbacks in my productions to manipulate 16(ish) years of the characters' history within a space of 3 minutes, so that the audience get a better understanding of the missing plot. 

• Levi-Straus : Binary Opposition: This is the understanding of the differences between the word and it's opposite. Within my music video, I explored a variety of different binary oppositions:
• love/hate
• nature/artificial (man-made)
• life/death
• body/soul
• strong/weak
• health/illness
• 
  
• Todorov -  recognised that there were 5 stages to narrative structure:
• equilibrium
• disruption
• recognition of the disruption
• an attempt to resolve the disruption
• restoration and new equilibrium
• Should ideally be acknowledged, however, I did not conform to this structure as I wanted there to be more confusion rather then resolution - create more enigma codes. There is no clear, set-in-stone equilibrium or disruption within my video. Arguably, it does however end with a new equilibrium with the characters eventually becoming fully visible to the audience, and the action connotes that they are finally finding resolution and are in a safe place to move on from. 

November 2013:
The Basics:

• Narrative is the way the story is told, or the way a series of facts are presented and organised.
• A story is simply the facts e.g. A meets B, something happens, and then B dies. A narrative on the other hand might begin with more detail, e.g. Once Upon a Time....
• The narrative is the way the story is told - how meaning is constructed for the audience. 
• Narrative Theory groups events into Cause and Effect or Action and Inaction.
• Narrative organises time and space to suit the medium or text.
• The narrative is constructed through elements such as camerawork, lighting, sound, mise-en-scene and editing.
• The most basic Narrative Structure consists of 5 stages:
• Exposition -  setting the scene and introducing characters
• Development - the situation develops, more characters are introduced
• Complication - something happens to complicate lives of characters
• Climax - decisive moment reached; matters come to head; suspense high
• Resolution - matters are resolved and satisfaction is reached

One of the main theorists for Narrative is Tvzetan Todarov. He introduced the Narrative idea of:

Equilibrium - Disequilibrium - New Equilibrium

• The middle stage = something happens to disturb what was already established at the start, and the resolution of that then results in a new equilibrium, which is different from the original.
• The idea can be expanded to:

Equilibrium - Disequilibrium - Recognition of Disruption - Attempt to Repair Disruption - Change to a New Equilibrium.

Vladamir Propp is also one of the other big theorists related to Narrative. He analysed a series of Russian fairy tales and came up with a list of 'stock' characters and character types.

• Hero (Protagonist)
• Villain (Antagonist)
• Donor
• Princess
• Father
• False Hero
• Helper etc.
• He also identified a series of stock situations which he called narratemes or narrative functions.
• Each narrateme is an event that drives forward the narrative, sometimes taking it in a new direction.
• They may not appear in every story, but they always appear in the same order.
• These 'functions' are not universal in all fiction, nor do they make up a complete description of fairy tales, nor are they directly applicable to other fairy tale traditions.
• The basic structuralist idea is that all fictional works have basically the same structure underneath, and that a story can be initiated by creating a sequence of abstract plot elements.

My Coursework:

I have so far created my initial 500-word plot for my music video, and in order to conform to the genre of the song I have chosen, and by linking the plot with co-ordinating lyrics, I have chosen to challenge Todorov's narrative theory, as it is more common to do so within the music industry in comparison to the film industry for example. With films, they are highly likely to follow the equilibrium - disequilibrium - equilibrium structure, unless they are planning a sequel, in which case it might end with the disequilibrium to create suspense. My basic plot so far consists of this:

• Intro - first character is introduced and setting is established - fairly neutral mood but still equilibrium.
• Flashbacks - the other characters are introduced and the core actions of the plot - a much happier mood - still an equilibrium.
• Revelation - the actions reveal that something bad has happened to one of the characters, but not much detail is specified, so there is some suspense, upset, anger etc - disequilibrium
• Ending - although there is no real resolution, the mood does become quite neutral again, and the central characters learns to live with what has happened, but nothing much more happens, it's left open with a cliffhanger really - basic equilibrium.

Equilibrium - equilibrium - disequilibrium - equilibrium. In this sense, the plot does somewhat conform to the theory/structure, but I know that when it comes to final planning and production, the 'flashbacks' section of the plot especially will become a lot more complex and will perhaps change the order of events. 

Whilst this theory is particularly important and works for some music videos, because of the specific genre of my chosen product, the use of documentary/home-video style shots don't work with the narrative theory/structure because it is 'based on real life', where anything can happen, as opposed to stories. It was Roland Barthes who suggested that "narrative works with different codes (see codal analysis G324) which activate the reader to make sense of it." This theory works particularly well with my plot for the music video, especially as it ends with an Enigma Code - a cliffhanger. This particular Enigma code in my plot of the girl releasing balloons into the air may puzzle viewers at first, but it should ideally help readers to identify the disequilibrium more, understanding that in fact the second female character died and hence why the mood of the video completely changed.