Narrative theory and structure...

NARRATIVE... is the coherence and organisation given to a series of facts. The human mind needs narrative to make sense of things as we connect events and make interpretations based on those connections. In everything we seek a beginning, a middle and an end. We understand and construct meaning using our experience of reality and of previous texts. Each text becomes part of the previous and the next through its relationship with the audience.

Narrative Conventions
When unpacking a narrative in order to find its meaning, there are a series of codes and conventions that need to be considered. When we look at a narrative we examine the conventions of :

•Genre
•Character
•Form
•Time

Comprehending Time
Very few screen stories take place in real time, for example,whole lives can be dealt within the 90 minutes of a feature film. There are many conventions to denote time passing, other devices to manipulate time include

•flashbacks
•dream sequences
•repetition
•different characters' POV
•flash forwards
•real time interludes
•pre-figuring of events that have not yet taken place

JoJo...Too little too late


Above, is a music video with a performance and narrative. The narrative contains flashbacks so the narrative is told in a non-linear way as it is not told in chronological order. There are flashbacks of the couple at the cinema, the protagonist watching her boyfriend play football as she is reflecting on their relationship. The events that have taken place are fragmented with performance shots inserted in between.

Kesha...Tik Tok


However, Kesha's song has a linear narrative as the events are told in chronological order. She starts the day waking up in a bath, and goes out into town and ends the day with a party at night before going back to where she initially started off in the morning in the bath. This also shows repetition as the beginning and ending have the same location.


Barthes´ Codes
Roland Barthes holds the theory of the signifier and the signified. This applies to music videos as we can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experiences, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by looking at the narrative from a different angle, and creating an entirely different meaning.

Barthes also decided that the different angles we percieve things and the way we unravel meanings are called narrative codes and that they could be categorised in the following five ways:

Narrative Structures
There are many ways of breaking down narrative structure. You may hear a movie described as a "classic Hollywood narrative", meaning it has three acts. News stories have their own structure. A lot of work has been done by literary theorists to develop ways of deconstructing a narrative.

•Tvzetan Todorov - suggests narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium
•Vladimir Propp - characters and actions
•Claude Levi-Strauss - constant creation of conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual (light/darkness, movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate, control/panic), and to do with soundtrack. Binary oppositions.

Day One...

On 8th December, we hired out the photography studio in our school to film the studio performance shots for our musis video. We used a white backdrop so that it appeared like a professional studio and filmed many different shots.

We filmed high angle shots, mid shots, long shots and close ups of Elle lip synching to the song. She also had several costume changes each reflecting the pop genre in girly clothing. We used the photography lights for extra lighting to add brightness to the shot and also actually included them in the shot as mise en scene for a studio.

We filmed Elle sitting on a stool lip synching, singing into a microphone from above, laying on the floor from an aeriel shot and many close ups.

We filmed footage from the flip camera and edited the best shots and added some funny shots too to the short clip below...

CD Digipacks research...

Ellie Goulding. This cd cover has been composed so that the artist is the main focus of the image. There is a mid shot of her which takes up most of the cd cover and she has natural hair and make up portraying her as innocent which reflects the pop genre. The background is of a night sky with stars around the artist and on her outfit as it reflects the name of the song, 'starry eyed' so the design of the single cd cover has relevance to the actual song meaning and words.

Kesha. This cd cover also has a mid shot of the artist but whereas Ellie Goulding was centered, Kesha is positioned to the right( rule of thirds). The cd cover has an animated effect so it appears cartoon like with neon colours which reflects the conventions of a pop genre. The text is written in gold to stand out with a glittery effect to appear girly and she has substituted the letter S with a dollar sign $ so it adds an urban outlook. The heart sign substitutes the letter O for the word love so again the design is relevant to the song name.

Lily Allen. The artist takes up most of the cd cover with a long shot and she is centralised so that she stands out. An audience will also be able to immediately tell that it is her album as she is on the cover herself.This is the single cover for her song 'London town' and in the background the mise en scene reflects the song title. There is a double decker red bus and Big Ben which are found in London so the song title has been depicted on the design of the cd cover.

Overall, from my research into digipacks in the pop genre, I found that most have the artist on them and have animations which illustrate the song title, so I will be taking these into account when designing my own digipack.

Practice filming for the 'Studio scene'...

Another practice filming session during a media lesson...

We went to film again but stayed indoors this time and decided to film the scenes in the studio which is a performance style.We went to our school gym as we wanted a plain white wall as it is similar to a white backdrop which we will use when we film our final music video.




We took our research from 'The rule of thirds' into consideration and applied our newly formed knowledge when we filmed these scenes. We played our song in the background when filming and when editing we took parts from our footage so we lip synched random parts which is what we will do in our real music video to break up the narrative.

Rule Of Thirds...

Imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect.

As well as using the intersections you can arrange areas into bands occupying a third or place things along the imaginary lines.Good places to put things; third of the way up or third of the way in from the left. It is not advised to place things; right in the middle, right at the top, right at the bottom, away in the corner.




Using the Rule of Thirds helps produce nicely balanced easy on the eye pictures. Also, as you have to position things relative to the edges of the frame it helps get rid of ' tiny subject surrounded by vast empty space' syndrome.


The Rule of Thirds is fairly structured but there are a great many methods you can employ which rely on your ability to 'see' things and incorporate them into your composition.