Section 1B - Narrative

"Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to Narrative" 25 Marks

Tim O'Sullivan identifies that ''media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves'' in relation to narrative. He believes that this can be shown through traditional story lines which would require full narratives for example film sequences. However because I am focusing this essay around my A2 music video production, the narrative is more fragmented which means only specific segments of a storyline are included through the duration of my 4 minute production. This video was to the song Cannibal, by artist Kesha.
Throughout this essay I will discuss the ideas of a variety of theorists and how they can link into my narrative of my personal production. I will look at the ideas of Pam Cook, Todorov, Levi - Strauss, Andrew Goodwin and Sven Carlsson.
Pam Cook believes the 'standard hollywood structure' should have a high degree of narrative closure which means an actual realistic ending that the audience can follow aka 'pathway to resolution'  instead of leaving the production with no real intention of giving the audience information about what has happened in the end scenes. I believe this can be included and followed in my music video because it's still a production that the audience watch all the way through and my video personally has an easy to follow narrative and does follow Cook's idea of a pathway to resolution in the way that my main character finally releases her true identity as a cannibal through the tea party scene and from then on, the audience can see that she is comfortable in her own skin and isn't afraid who knows about it. I also think it's quite a realistic type of 'resolution' I have included in my music video because many people could be in my main characters position with a variety of different identities they are hiding from society for example their sexuality, hobbies, ambitions e.t.c and hopefully adding reality into it will make them realise that they don't have to hide away and it's ok to admit the truth.
Todorov believes there is 5 parts to a narrative 1)Calm 2)Disrupted Stability 3) Recognition takes place 4)Action happens 5)Restoration, this is usually linked to films because of the duration, so obviously in my own music video it wouldn't be possible to include every point. I believe the narrative of my video started from stage 2 as I don't believe it could be ever seen as 'calm' due to the fierce and chilling opening frames of my main character walking away from a dead body to growl at the camera with blood all over her face, suggests that she has killed him, from then on I don't believe the stages where linked perfectly as stage 3 was never really shown and stage 4 of the action happening, happened throughout the whole video because she had been attacking the males to feast on their blood because of her 'secret cannibal identity'. Although she does express her secret at the end of the video I don't believe mine personally enters stage 5 because no real ending is shown for example you never see what her life is like now she has admitted to being a cannibal or whatever happened to the males she was attacking e.t.c. But I do believe some of Todorov's points link in exactly to the running of my music video.
Levi - Strauss has the idea of binory opposites being used throughout a narrative to single out each character for example good vs evil or rich vs poor to show the divide between each person included (this is usually the case again of films) however it can relate to some types of music videos depending on the narrative. Good vs  Evil would definitely be the case for my video as the main character would be seen as the evil one because she is attacking the males for no real reason just so she can drink their blood which they haven't really given any consent too. Whereas the males would be seen as the good characters because they are really the 'princess's' in this whole situation who are waiting to be rescued to escape being viciously attacked any longer by the female, however because the males and the single female are the only people included in the video they are never actually saved, which makes the sense of evil stronger on the main characters behalf. Although this theory links to my video personally I don't think it would work with some of my other class members final productions because the story lines simply don't have that type of divide through their characters.
Andrew Goodwin is an influential theorist who can link to a variety of elements regarding a music video. Linking only to narrative he discusses that ''narrative relations are highly complex'' which means that ideas can surface from other genres and don't have to be fully linked to the specific type of genre your working in. I took ideas from the more alternative types of genres by having quite a dark and mysterious story line which isn't usually seen in a pop/dance video. The fact that my main character is dwelling on a identity problem compared to thinking about having a night out on the town with her best girlfriends shows that the relations from other narratives/genres can be linked together if its done in the correct way because there is such a variety of genres out there today all of them link in someway depending on the type of story line that is going to be followed, I wanted to make mine more unique and let the audience feel inspired by my main character rather than just look at her as a party girl. This theory is of a generic type and could link to any type of music video genre because they all interlink to create the finished product.
Finally Sven Carlson says that narrative comes from either 'performance or contextual clips' performance narrative consists of mainly the artist where as contextual clips are more artistic references. I believe my video personally referred to the performance type of clip because throughout the duration of the video it consists of mainly shots focused on the main character to show that she is the main attraction and the whole narrative performance is about her life, which is her trying to express her real identity being a cannibal to the world then the rest of the video consists of dance performance as dance routines are a main convention during pop/dance genre music videos and plays a main part of her 'coming out' of her identity stages which is converted into a dance sequence to give the audience something they are used to seeing as well as developing the interest on the narrative. I do believe Carlson's theory links to my music video because the performance clips are what my video consists of throughout, so it is true that music video's are either all about the characters/performers or all about artistic imagination.

Overall I have chosen to discuss these 5 theorists because I believe they can all link in some way back to my own personal music video production because of me choosing such a unique type of story line/narrative to work with, however I don't believe this would have been the case for other groups in my media class as there videos consisted of a different genre and narrative which will have focused on different conventions which could initially mean other theorists would be the one for them to link back their production too. Furthermore I believe I have discussed how each theorist's ideas links to my idea of narrative in greater detail and also linked it back to the question.