Category: Component 3

A narrative-based music video is a music video that tells a story or follows a specific plot. It’s like watching a short film that is synchronized with the music. To ensure you create a good narrative within a music video you need to have a good setting, characters and events that unfold throughout the music video. You also need effective cinematography and editing to help bring the narrative to life.

Here are some structures artists may use within their music videos:

Episodic: self contained stories within a story, like how they stand out on their own.

Anachronic: These typically use flash backs and don’t stick to a chronological time frame.

Thematic: This involves amplifying the lyrics and illustrate the ideas in visual metaphors.

Linear: Classic beginning middle and end narrative. May have an enigmatic ending and encourage the audience to watch it again.

For this I chose three videos to analyse and to decode each one.

Narrative: This music video is Hold My Hand by Jess Glynne. Within the music video Jess Glynne expresses a desire for emotional connection and reasurance, singing about being there for someone in need. The lyrics convey a message of mutal support and encouragement, emphasiszing the importance of standing together through difficult times. The chorus “Hold My Hand” serves as a metaphor for offering comfort to someone facing challenges or uncertainties.

 

Narrative: Hello by Adele tells a story of longing, regret, and unresolved feelings. The narrative of the song resolves around Adele reaching out to an old flame and reflecting on past memories. The song begins with a phone call of adele calling someone from her past, symbolizing a desire to reconnect and possibly reconcile. She says “Hello from the other side, I must’ve called a thousand times,” indicating persistant attempts to reach out and communicate. Overall the narrative is a heartfelt exploration of love, loss, and the emotional aftermath of a breakup.

Narrative: The pretender by the foo fighters is a powerful rock song with a narrative that explores themes of inner termoil, defiance, and resilience. The song delves into the concept of pretending and wearing a mask to hide one’s true self. The lyrics depict a sense of inner conflict and frustration. The protagonist feels trapped in a false persona, struggeling to break free from external pressures and expectations. Overall the song resonates with listeners through its raw emotion, powerful lyrics, and anthemic sound, inspiring a sense of defiance and determination.

My own narratives:

When creating a music video it is important to impliment some key features to help create meaning. For this I had to analyse a music video and look at some of the key features used, I also filled out a criteria sheet on what I thought worked well and what didn’t.

The music video I analysed was The Pretender by the Foo Fighters.

For this music video I looked at 3 shots that worked well and 3 shots that didn’t.

Three shots that worked well:

This shot signifies an aerial shot of the workers moving in a line. This gives us a nice perspective of the workers, which helps engage the audience with the narrative.

 

This shot is signifed through depth of field, this is where the background is blurry and out of focus but the main subject (the singer) is in focus. This helps us focus on the main singer.

 

This is portrayed in a canted angle and the main subject is quite blurry and the drums are more in focus, which makes the audience focus on the drums.

 

Three shots that did not work well:

The bit when the workers were randomly walking around made the narative seem disjointed and out of place, as it wasn’t clear where they were going.

 

The warehouse where they filmed their music video in seems a bit generic, they could’ve had a larger variety of places where they could’ve filmed to create a better narative. The Mis En Scene when they were performing wasn’t great, because it didn’t really fit in the theme of their song.

 

Main singer walking to where they were gonna perform. This diddn’t really seem needed and made the music video seem a little disjointed.

Focus Forward:

Analysing this music video has allowed me to see what works and what doesn’t. Also how important using Mise En Scene to help create a better narrative for the audience. Using a range of particular shots as well to help keep it engaging. This has allowed me to ensure how to make my music video engaging and impliment some of the key themes I’ve learnt, like to use Mise En Scene to create a narrative and to have a good area to shoot my shots which links with the story being conveyed. This will ensure I get the highest grade I can in my music video.

Please click the link to see a more clear image of my music form.

 

Signifed above is my music video form, for this I chose 3 different songs of my choice and had to analyse the conventions used for each song.

Throughout when I was analysing each music video I made sure to decode the narrative through the use of Mise En Scene and the particualar events portrayed throught each music video. Two of the music videos I looked at had only the narative being conveyed. The other one I analysed was also mostly signified through the narative but had some performance in it to convey meaning. Throughout looking at the music videos, I made sure I analysed how the narative was represented (Barthes) I also looked at how the star image was portrayed (Dyer) I also analysed how the narative was represented (Barthes) and how messages are conveyed through encoding and decoding (Hall). These key concepts are imperative in a music video as they are used to help create meaning for the audience.

Reflection:

Doing this has allowed me to analyse ways on creating a narative, as this can be portrayed through the Mise En Scene used or the particular events portrayed which both help create a narative. From what I have learnt, I will make sure the ratio of the narative and performance are around the same  when I am creating my music video, as I would want to choose a song that creates a story while also conveying meaning through the performance.