Narrative Theory - How concentions are followed or challenged

The narrative of our A2 music video of "Cradle" by The Joy Formidable both conforms and challenges conventional narrative theories and this has had a positive impact on our final product.

The narrative of the product takes form as a whole narrative rather than an enigma or section. As the video progresses so does the narrative as it follows the main character of a girl who suffers a terrible day due to a sequence of frustrating events. The narrative is made whole by the use of a twist at the end, conforming to the conventions of a resolved ending, in this case being that the entire narrative is a day dream and not reality as it is portrayed to be.

The structure of the plot is again conventional in some ways yet does not conform in others. The narrative is not linear, but made up of three layers: a primary layer of the conventional narrative, the second taking form in flashbacks being made clear through the use of black and white, and a third layer signified with masks. the layers are completely separate and yet are spliced into and integrated with each other. This integration is clearly identified by the changing and contrasting locations used. For example, the conventional narrative layer that follows the girl from her home, an urban, concrete city setting, is interrupted with jump cuts to the forest scenes. These ever-changing and contrasting locations echo the change and contrast between how the narrative begins and how it progresses, showing a working narrative. This concept is illustrated through the jump cuts to the flashbacks from the cafe of the boyfriend cheating. The way in which the audience is taken from the cafe to the flashbacks is sudden. It so fragments the narrative while at the same time providing information that informs it. Below are three examples, each representing a layer in the music video, urban, flashbacks and rural.

The narrative is also represented through more than one layer and cab also be represented through the opposites used between the layers. This relates to Levi-Strauss' theory of binary oppositions and is most represented in our production through the opposition of fantasy verses reality. This concept is illustrated greatly in the three shots in which the audience see the girl walk past a boy on the street who crudely approaches her. The audience see the boy as simply that, yet we jump cut to the girl and back to the male and the audience now sees him in a pig mask, emphasising his characters behaviour. This sudden change between fantasy and reality is in keeping with the unique feel of the indie genre and the fact that it happens in such quick succession shows just how fine a line there is between fantasy and reality and how quickly it can be crossed. We also challenge Strauss' approach in regards to fantasy and reality, in that we see the two oppositions collide. This is seen in the shot in the forest where the girl is surrounded by people in masks. She is the only real person, showing that oppositions not only attract but the fact that she becomes a masked character herself sees them collide.

Due to the use of layers to fragment the plot or narrative our video can be seen to embody post modernist characteristics, and its lack of linear narrative allows it to be considered a post modernist production. Baudrillard's post modernist theory of simulara can be seen both conformed to and challenged in our video. For example, despite the fact that the situations presented to the audience are fairly mundane and easily relatable in real society, it is still merely a representation and not reality. However, the second part of our video is not set in reality but in a day dream and so we are not trying to represent reality, contradicting Baudrillard's theory entirely.

Intertextuality is another post modernist technique used, that can seen clearly throughout all three tasks, being the music video, the digipak and the magazine advert. For example, a prominent motif we carried through each task was that of the rural and urban setting. This is seen to be a dominant theme in the music video as we see the girl progress from the urband street areas, such as the cafe and the house she is evicted from, to the more rural areas such as the forest where she is approached by the masked characters. The digipak continues this motif but does invert the chronology of the transition from urban to rural, seeing the four panel digipak begin in the forest on the front panel, and slowly morph into a brick wall representing the urban setting on the back cover. This change in chronology echos the nature of the indie genre, never quite knowing where it is and allowing the childlike mind set of 'anything can happen'. Finally the urban/rural collision is reinforced in the magazine advert which sees the artist pictured against a brick wall, however there are three branches sweeping in from the sides of the frame. This sees rural still trying to penetrate the urban society it has been shut out from, and also echos the concept of fantasy and reality as the rural areas are intended to represent fantasy and the brick wall is intended to represent the gritty, mundane aspects of life. By the vines sweeping across the brickwork it communicates the idea of fantasy seemingly penetrating reality, echoing that seen in the video production.

Our group has embraced aspects of many theorues and yet refuted others. This partial compliance yet remained lack of conformity shows us still being faithful to the genre of indie as its principals are to literally be 'individual', hence the name 'independent rock'.

Challenging forms and conventions

Our music video production was made for the music genre of indie and in producing our video we came across many forms and conventions, some of which we embraced and others which we felt better to challenge.

It is common in music videos for the content of the video to have a strong link with the genre of the music it is representing. This is a very typical convention of music videos and one we tried very hard to embody in our video production. As our genre is indie we watched several music videos to determine specific traits of the genre, for example from watching Kate Nash's video 'Pumpkin Soup' we found that indie videos tend to use high contrast and bright and vibrant colours. We emulated this characteristic in our video by heightening the contrast during the editing process and, as we shot most of our video outside, tried to shoot in sunny areas to give a brighter colour to the shots. For example, the forest scenes were shot mostly in sunlight which made the greens and crisp browns of the leaves stand out and the artist's clothing bright, as is seen in typical indie videos such as The mystery Jets 'Two Doors Down' where their costumes are brightly coloured, as seen below along with a screen shot as an example of the colour we used.

There is a relatively strong relationship between the lyrics and the visuals in our music video which we used so as to reinforce the meaning of the song. As a strong genre characteristic of the indie genre is to literally be individual, we found some indie videos not to have an absolute or clearly defined link between lyrics and visuals, such as the music video for 'Cousins' by Vampire Weekend, which sees the hook or dominant lyric "Me and my cousins, you and your cousins" is in no way paired with what is shown on screen, quite the opposite. Our music video challenges this convention by pairing perhaps not every shot or specific objects with the lyrics but by creating links to the lyrics through things such as the narrative. For example, the song 'Cradle' is about a girl who wants a relationship to end and so we took the idea of the girl wanting the relationship to end and applied it to her wanting the terrible day to end, presenting her with difficult situations which echoed not the specific word of the lyrics but the meaning. This is illustrated by the shot that occurs just after the artist sings "I'll pretend a pretty pretend" which then cuts to a shot of the girl hugging the cheating boyfriend. It becomes apparent in the following few shots that the boyfriend has cheated and so the lyric "pretty pretend" emphasises the pretense that the relationship has become and shows a distinct link between the lyrics and visuals, seeing the meaning of the lyrics and sees this meaning represented in the what is shown onscreen. We do at some points illustrate the lyrics literally on screen, the best example of this is the point at which the lyrics state "I Wish". At this point there is a jump cut to a girl holding a sign that literally echos the lyrics as it reads "I Wish". This is reinforced by the next shot in which the screen cuts into four with the sign being multiplied. The use of this shot reinforces the meaning of the lyrics and the meaning of the song by heightening the importance of the words acting as perhaps the 'hook'.

We have conformed to the convention of establishing and maintaining a link between the music and the visuals throughout our music video. The link between the two greatly engages the viewer with the video and helps keep pace throughout the video. A link between the visuals and the music itself can be seen in that the pace of the visuals shown and the cuts used increases as the pace of the track does and are well times with certain parts of the song. This is illustrated perfectly by the part of the song where the guitar suddenly gets very loud and this sudden burst of volume is paired with a jump cut of the girl treading on a stick and is in perfect time with the loud guitar chord. This timing of the music combined with the visual greatly amplifies the sound and the content of the shot itself, the stick breaking, almost illustrates the tone of the music, seeing and angry and spontaneous action echo the aggressive increase in volume and pace of the music. This echoing of the music through the visuals is also seen in well known indie videos such as that of Arctic Monkeys "The View From the Afternoon", specifically in the shot where the music begins with loud drumming and so there is a long shot of a boy literally drumming, making it seem as though he is playing those heard in the track.

The artist and the shots which 'promote' her were a key aspect of our music video, in that the ultimate purpose of a music video is to promote an artist and the single it is presenting , and so we tried to make her shots in the video have certain characteristics or a motif that the viewer would associate with her directly, we found this motif to be that she is filmed in a woodland area. In every shot she appears in she is immersed in or surrounded by trees, leaves and sky and even though these are all aspects that appear in some other shots in the video, ultimately the viewer relates the area of the forest with the artist. This association ensures a sense of memorability to the artist, providing a connection that the audience will not forget and ensuring publicity for the artist. Indie videos often have a separate motif for the artist, portraying them in different backgrounds or in different clothing to others, an example being Patrick Wolf's video for "Magic Position" in which he wears a bright red/ orange shirt at the beginning of the video and even though the colours of the video are bright he begins in a grey room and so his shirt immediately sets him out as the artist and shows his significance to both the track and video. We emulated this by getting the girl acting the role of the artist to wear a checkered shirt to contrast her surroundings, as seen below with a screen shot of Patrick Wolf's video.

The use of close ups to sell or promote the artist is also a common convention which we felt it beneficial to conform to, this is also illustrated by the above example. The conformity to this convention was beneficial as it communicates a sense of the artist's identity to the audience, engaging them with the person singing the track rather than them just hearing the words. We embraced this convention with great success as almost every shot featuring the artist is a close up, literally selling the artist just as much as the track which conforms to the very purpose of a music video in itself.

Goodwin's theory states that there are frequent notions of looking at or voyeuristic treatment of women in music videos. We have challenged this convention to a great extent in the fact that we do not objectify or see characters looking at the main female character for the majority of the video as this was not a characteristic of the genre of indie at all, however we didn't refute the convention completely. This is seen in the scene that sees a male shrewdly approaching the girl and jeer at her as she walks by. This is aperfect example of looking at women in an objectifying manner, however it is not so much a voyeuristic representation.

Final draft of digipak

(click to enlarge)

Here is the final draft of our digipak, which sees the finished design of all four panels and how it would appear as an unfolded album. We were very faithful to the original ideas as can be seen in the sketches previously posted, adding colour, in a very childlike fashion, to rough sketches that were desired to conform to certain conventions of indie album covers, such as that of Jason Mraz's album "We sing. We dance. We steal things." Although he is not typically associated with the genre, his style of acoustic music could be and the album cover, as seen below, embodies the same style of childish sketching that our digipak trys to. The face seen on the cover is loosely drawn with no great care taken to make the drawing perfect and this relates completely to the way we used sketchy and loose drawing as the background for every panel, using a real photograph on the front cover.

This combining of medias can also be seen to echo that seen in albums such Santogold's self titled album "Santogold", as seen below, seeing photography being manually manipulated with the use of glitter.

• The front panel is simplistic in its design and we did not deviate from our initial ideas much at all. The artist's portrait is a crucial feature as it is one thing to promote the album but by having the artist as part of the album cover there will be an instant association created in the audience's mind which will ultimately help better the sale of the album and band. The artist is also placed in the centre of the frame so as to accentuate her importance and to an extent, her fame.
• The band's name, The Joy Formidable, is placed at the top of the frame in a different font and style of writing to the the rest of the words on the cover, this positioning and font shows the band's importance and fame. This positioning also corresponds to most album covers, regardless of genre, in that to promote the band to their full extent they are usually placed at the highest point of the frame, the top. This aspect is also seen in the two examples above as well as our own product.
• The background of the panel is the forest and sees intertextuality in play as it links directly to one of the locations used in pour music video. This background of the forest is the are in which the artist is shot in the video as well as the area in which the character of the girl ends in at the end, so there is automatically a link with the artist as well as the video production. This association will ensure a sense of memorability, promoting the band in the subtlest way possible, subliminally.
• The inside left and right panels see the setting of the digipak change, slowly morphing into an urban setting of a brick wall. The inside left panel sees a brick wall slowly emerging through the trees although the trees remain the prominent aspect of the image, linking to the video again and echoing the sense of the girl being very much in control of her life and to extent, her sanity. This is completely contradicted by the inside right which sees the brick wall very dominant with only a few branches crossing the bricks. This now represents the idea of her insanity deteriating further and it is completely gone by the time we reach the final panel which is complete brick. The transition from urban to rural echos that seen in the music video.

Final draft of magazine advert

Here is the final draft of our magazine advert, produced after some minor alterations which we feel as a group truly help it to fulfil its purpose in promoting the band themselves and the album

• The changes made to the advert ensure that it completely conforms to our original designs and that the changes suggested positively effected the advert. An example of this being that the writing that was somewhat overshadowed by the image in the first draft is now completely bold and eye catching as it now bold white lettering over a black strip. This not only helps convey important information but also conforms to conventions of other adverts such as that for the band 'Hooked', depicted below. This link is not os much in the layout of the advertisement but in the way they have the band name and key information portrayed against a dark background, to enhance the lettering and what it is trying to say.

• The album's title 'Broken Pane' has also been made to appear bolder and so promotes the album further.
• Our magazine advert conforms greatly to the conventions of adverts in the indie genre as it is simplistic, features the band is the fact that it is drawn conforms to the sometimes child-like feel a viewer gets from indie album artwork, such as that of The Cure, as seen below.

Representations

In our video we have established representations of things such as genre, class and gender to aid the understanding of our video by our target audience. These representations are constructed through the narrative and the character's behaviour and in some ways the props used, such as the masks.


Genre:

• The genre of our film was indie, a well known genre and one that has many defining characteristics which we tried to embrace as much as possible. For example, indie videos tend to use bright colours to capture attention and give the video something of an atmosphere, we tried to emulate this by using bright colour wherever we could. We used a cafe with a green front, the girl was dressed in vibrant blue colours and the performance shots were set in the forest in the sunlight which gave the shots a bright and airy feel. to heighten the use of colour in accordance with the indie genre we also heightened the contrast to get the best tone of colour for our product.
• The masks used also play a huge part in communicating the genre, as the indie genre is known for such abstract props. The fact that the masks were of animals also conform to the genre as there are videos such as Santigold's "L.E.S Artistes" who use animal imagery by using actual animals, although our production only used masks the concept was still the same. The masks we also used to establish a sense of character and personality of the people wearing them rather than just have the people's faces, this idea is conventional of the indie genre as it is an alternative way of representation rather than going straight for the mainstream concepts.

Class:

• Class was not a theme that was particularly focused on as it was not as relative to the narrative of our product, however there are ways and moments in our video that can be seen to represent the area of class. An example of this is the fact that the main female actress and the male actor playing the boyfriend are both seen to be well dressed. The girls clothes are brightly colored and fashionable and are neat and clean cut. the same can be said for the male character. He wears a clean black coat and has neat hair and a tidy apparel. Their clothes reflect their place in society, perhaps being middle class or at the higher end of the working class. The fact that they are meeting at a dainty yet pleasant cafe indicates that they have the money to do so as a result of their class.
• This representation of the 'higher' class can be contradicted by the shot seeing the jeering male in the pig mask. This is so in the sense that the boy's clothes depict the typical attire associated with the working and lower class. he is seen in a black, tattered hoodie and combat style trousers accompanied with dirty trainers. His clothes combined with his exhibition of behavior towards others is also associated with the lower classes as it appears uncouth and ill mannered and almost animalistic - this linking with the mask we used to represent his character exactly.

Gender:

• Aside the general representations of male and females in our video, our production seems to find a general opinion of males forming as the video progresses. This view appears, by the end, to be that all males in the video are depicted as cowardly, lying and egotistical. This idea if formulated by the shots that see the girl encounter the male characters throughout the narrative. For example, the first character we meet, aside from the artist, is the character of the boyfriend. He is looking awkward and fidgety, as though he has a secret to hide that the audience is soon to find out. This represents males as secretive and possibly as Liars.
• There is only one female in the video and she is constructed as a strong character that is somewhat victomised by the male society, as the landlord and jeering youth are both male. This victomisation could also be reinforced by the fact that the girl is out numbered by the amount of male characters in the video and so appears vulnerable and this is confirmed as she ultimately yields and becomes one of the masked people.

Goodwin's Theory

During the stage in which analysed music videos I did so in accordance with the terms put forward by Andrew Goodwin. He stated that:

• Music videos demonstrate characteristics of the genre
• There will be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals
• There will be a relationship between the music and the visuals
• The artist may develop distinctive motifs that may reoccur throughout their videos.
• There is often intertextual reference to things such as existing films etc.
• There is frequent reference to the notion of looking and particularly voyeurtristic treatment of the female body.

Most of these ides can be related to our music video as we tried to incorporate certain ones from the beginning, overall conforming to Goodwin's theory. For example we intended from the outset to portray the genre of indie in our music video by conforming to typical conventions of the genre, such as using abstract masks that you would not find in videos of other genres, such as RnB or Metal.

Our video production also has a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, for example the line in which the artist says "I Wish" sees a jump cut to a sign with the words written on it. This in itself establishes a visual link to the words in the music.

A link between the visuals and the music itself can be seen in that the pace of the visuals shown and the cuts used increases as the pace of the track does and are well times with certain parts of the song. This is illustrated perfectly by the part of the song where the guitar suddenly gets very loud and this sudden burst of volume is paired with a jump cut of the girl treading on a stick and is in perfect time with the loud guitar chord.

Audience Feedback

After finishing our video production we felt it constructive to gather feedback from a range of people, below is the edited feedback uploaded to youtube:

We recieved fedback from our teachers after the first production of our video and worked upon that feedback to improve it. The feedback above sees most people acknowledging the improvements made and even though there are still areas that some felt could be improved. The general view that comes across in the feedback is that the video's narrative has been made much clearer, the purpose of the masks that were formerly misunderstood were also said to have been made clearer and the addition of the performance shots helped establish the video as a music video rather than a short film.