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.