Plot and Narrative Work for the Music Video

The narrative for our music video is a very important aspect we need to consider because our chosen song had quite a strong narrative that we must show it within the music video. We need to look into what the story is within the lyrics and how we can create visuals that show whats going on. It is essential that the narrative is easy to follow and makes sense so that the viewer can easily tell whats going on and enjoy watching it.

The plot of our chosen song is about a couple who have been together for a long time but the female was unfaithful and cheated on the male. The male finds out what she did and she realises he knows during the song. He explains that he knows what she did last summer to the female and is telling her to admit it to him. This plot is quite simple which allows us to adapt to it how we wish. For example we can choose what happens at the end because it isn't stated in the lyrics.

For our music video we need to match the visuals with this plot. We have ideas like showing flashbacks of their past and the good times they had together to help the viewer follow their journey and learn about their relationship so it is more emotional. We thought we could use photo albums of memories presenting what their relationship was like when they were together and then making the photos come to life using the flashbacks. We could include shots of them walking to somewhere, in which they eventually bump into each other at the same place. Throughout this we could use split screens of them both walking to make it easy for the viewer to follow that they are both walking somewhere at the same time. This will build up to the final moment at the end where they could break up or something like this. These are our main ideas at the moment towards showing the narrative but we feel that we need a lot more content to show that the female has cheated on the male.

Narrative Theories

Todorovs theory

This theory has 5 stages which are:

• Equilibrium - introducing the narrative with no problems
• Disruption - the problem that has been caused
• Recognition of disruption - others realise whats happened
• Attempts to repair disruption - fix the problem caused
• Return to equilibrium - problem is fixed and returns to beginning

This fits in with our narrative because:

• Stage 1 (Equilibrium) - at the beginning of the plot the couple are together and nothing is wrong
• Stage 2 (Disruption) - when she cheats on him and disrupts the relationship with lies trying to hide from him what she has done
• Stage 3 (Recognition of disruption) - when the male finds out that she cheated 
• Stage 4 (Attempts to repair disruption) - she tries to fix the problem between them and get him back
• Stage 5 (Return to equilibrium) - They either break up or fix things between them and the problem is resolved returning back to equilibrium where it could happen again between them or whoever they move on to.
• 
  

Enigma Theory

This is a narrative device that teases the audience by presenting a puzzle to be solved and making the audience question what is going on and it works to delay the story's ending pleasurably. This links with our ideas for our music video because at first the audience will not have a clear understanding of what is going on, allowing them question and think about what is happening. During the music video they will learn more about whats happening but it will still give them more questions. For example they will discover she has cheated on him but they don't know what he is going to do about it. This keeps the audience intrigued because they will want to find out so they carry on watching thinking its going to be revealed at the end. To make the story even more intriguing to the audience, at the ending we could show just before something happens and finish it before we find out. This will leave the audience on a cliff hanger wanting to know what happens. Therefore this will cause even more thought and discussion because it will allow them to predict and choose themselves what they wanted to happen.


Propp Theory

This theory is about characterisation and the common roles you will often find within a story. This theory doesn't really link with our music video's narrative because the character roles/types listed are quite extreme and don't actually fit into our plot. We are also following quite a basic narrative and only using two characters which we couldn't possible fit in two any of these roles. The females role could come under 'the villain' making the male the victim, but realistically the females role would make more sense as 'the cheater' rather than any of these roles because 'villain' sounds a bit too extreme. Here is the list of roles for this theory:

1. The villain
2. The hero
3. The donor
4. The Helper
5. The princess
6. Her father
7. The dispatcher
8. The false hero

This has no correlation as there are only 2 characters in our music video. Therefore the theory becomes irrelevant after step 1. So the female could be seen as the villain for cheating on the male, but there is no hero involved. The narrative mainly justifies around the fact they are not getting back together. We could include the character who the female cheats with as 'the helper' for the villain if we wanted to add more context within the story. However overall we don't believe we will be using this theory for our music video because it doesn't fit well with our ideas and we don't want to have so many characters.

Overall by doing this task it has allowed us to look in depth towards the narrative within the lyrics of the song and start organising how we will be representing the plot within our music video in terms of what visuals we will show. Researching this theories has given us a overview of the different aspects of narrative that we need to consider - the stages to a plot, the build up of the plot and questioning the audience, and the roles in the plot. We will be considering all of these aspects but we won't use these theories to so much extent within our music video. Our narrative fits in really well with Todorovs theory so we are likely to be using this and we may possibly use the Enigma theory as well to help draw in our audience.