Applying Narrative Theory to your Work
- 2. Summarise the lyrics of your music video. How far did you chose to follow the lyrics in your music video? Did you choose to concentrate on the relationship between the music and the visuals? How do you show this? (refer back to Andrew Goodwin in your advanced production workbook).
- 3. What is the general mood of your music video? Are there key lines which you chose to give visual dominance to? (refer back to Steve Archer and his comments on music video in your advanced production workbook).
- 4. Is there any sense of a cause-effect relationship in the video? (Bordwell and Thompson). Do you observe a linear narrative structure? This is unlikely as videos tend to only suggest storylines and focus on fragments of the lyrics (Steve Archer).
- 5. Dance tracks may just have pulsating abstract visuals which follow the beat with no visual reference to human agency. However, it is more likely that the music video will feature members of the band either performing or acting, placing a visual dominance on the band involved in the telling of a story in some way. This could be linked to the writing of John Berger (Ways of Seeing) who claims that we are preconditioned to make narrative in preference to shapeless, abstract, eventless images.
- 6. What role does the artist play in your music video – narrator, protagonist or both? Is the video a vehicle for the artist’s star persona? (Refer back to Andrew Goodwin)
- 7. Link back to the last question and explain how and why you chose a subjective or objective character identity in your music video. Subjective character identity – a range of characters ‘stories’ or points of view are shown. Objective character identity – one characters story or point of view is shown. Refresh your memory of this by re-reading the slide presentation before.
- 8. Is it possible to apply Proppian narrative theory to your music video? If not, why not? See the slide presentation before for Propp’s theory. Is it possible or even useful to apply Todorov’s theory to your music video? See the slide presentation before for Todorov’s theory.
- 9. VERY IMPORTANT! Neither Propp or Todorov analysed music videos. They were literary theorists working in Russian at the turn of the Twentieth century. They belonged to a group of writers and thinkers (called the Formalists) who were studying the Russian fairy/folk tale and why these stories had such a universal appeal. Their theories on narrative structure were ‘adopted’ by French film critics in the 1950’s working on a magazine called ‘Cahiers du Cinema’. Film theorists such as Andre Bazin believed that Hollywood film followed similar narrative structures as the classic fairytale which was why film was so popular. This structuralist way of analysing film texts (analysing the structure rather than the biography of the person who made it) has become an important theoretical tool in media studies. Due to the universal appeal of media texts, both Propp and Todorov’s theories have been used to analyse texts like television programmes. Do Propp and Todorov ‘work’ with music video?
- 10. Finally, look at the previous slide presentation for Allan Cameron’s work on modular narratives. Does your music video feature any of the modular methods of narrative: Anachronic Forking Episodic Or Split screen?