Shown above is a mini pitch for an idea for my music video. For the song, I chose the song “Bourgeoisieses” by Conan Grey. I created a new unique narraitve idea, and decided not to follow any of my previous ideas. Conan Grey has a very neutral grain of voice so there will be lots of choices for what model I’ll be able to use.

In order to gain more insight into the narrative I will be creating for my own music video, I have analysed the narrative for three narative based music videos.

In the Tom Grennan – Little Bit of Love music video, the narrative content has been amplified. The narrative was portrayed via an anachronic structure. There was a sense of chronological order, but the music video largely consisted of flashbacks. The story follows two family memers, presumably brothers. The younger brother has a dream of becoming a proffesional swimmer, and we see the older brother support him in that however possible. However, we know the older brother has gotten himself in toruble, money is demanded from him, and people are throwing bricks through his living room window to demand this from him. At the end of the music video, we see the older brother take the younger brother as they swim across a lake to run away from the people who are after the older brother.

In the Taylor Swift Bad Blood music video, the narrative content has been amplified. The narrative was portrayed via a linear structure, there was the classic beginning, middle, and end, and there was a clear sense of story which was easy to follow. Although a linear structure is rarely used, as there is a lack of an enigmatic ending, so therefore, not as many people will rewatch the music video, in this case, there are an abundance of celebrity cameos, such as Cara Delavigne, Zendaya, and Ellen Pompeo just to name a few. Due to this, lot’s of people will rewatch the video just to see their favourite celebrities. The story in this musac video depicts two opposing forces fighting against each other. The two ring leaders of the opposing groups were seen in the first scene to be fighting on the same team, assisting each other in taking down an office block, until ‘Arsyn’ betrays ‘Catastrophe’ (portrayed by Taylor Swift), as the rest of the video continues following Taylor as she sings about the new found ‘Bad Blood’ between them. We know that this music video is set in the future, due to thier modern outfits, and use of technology that is not yet invented, allowng the audience to feel a sense of suspense as they have no idea on how the story will progress. The music video ends with Catastrophe’s team walking towards Arsyns team, with Catastrophe steam just having blown up the city behind them, and a cut to a short clip of the begining of their fight.

In the Dua Lipa Dance The Night Away music video, the narrative content has been illustrated accurately to the lyrics of the song. The narrative was portrayed via a thematic narrative, the music video was simply amplifyimg the lyrics and illustrating them via visual metaphors. The story in this music video follows along from the idea of the ‘Barbie’ movie, so in this music video, Dua Lipa is portaying her own barbie, who is creating a music video, so throughout the video, we see the processes and the missteps that happen during the production. We see the star of Barbie, Margot Robbie, along with the chairs of directors, for example, Greta Gurwig. At the end of the music video, we are shown the mirror ball being taken outside as the camera crew prepare to film another shot.

Shown below are three narratives I have chosen myself in order to spark inspiration for possible narratives in my final music video:

Speak of the devil – A group of teenage girls heard a rumour around school, stating that if you complete a certain ritual, then a spirit of the devil will appear and haunt you. In a game of truth or dare, one of the girls has been dared to complete this ritual. During this, the girl’s mother walks in and tries to explain that the rumour is false, untill the girl completes the ritual, and then the mother was in disbelief to what she was seeing…

Time flies when you’re having fun – Observation of a school playground, one kid is sat on a bench every day at lunch, watching his peers play around him, he is constantly looing at his watch, waiting for lunch to be over. Everyday when the bell rings he is met with all of his peers saying “no way lunch is over already”, when he feels he’s been on that bench for days.

Actions speak louder than words – Someone working at the office block is known not to speak to anyone, he is excellent at his job but has always been excluded from his work’s after hours drinks. One day, he sees his co-worker in distress, everyone else around her is either ignoring her, or shouting at her to get on with her work. He simply walks over to her and smiles and hugs her. This is the begining of a beautiful firendship.

When making our music video, I will need to bear in mind the assesment criteria, so I dont miss out on the key shots, angles, and effects that could elevate my music video to be the best it can be. In order to begin establishing my understanding of MES and what;s needed, I looked at a previous students music video to give me an idea of what’s available to me, and what I will be capable of.

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What went well: Good use of rule of thirds, focus shot, clear star image

What went well: High angle, diverse range of shots throughout the music video.

What went well: Angle shot, creates tension

Even better if: Music video is performance based, so when characters are introduced it is confusing as we don’t know who they are, or their relevance to the story.

Even better if: Music video cycles through the same few shots throughout the whole of the music video

Even better if: The whole music video was filmed in one location, they should have at least two different settings, and it feels like the filming was rushed.

Focus Forward:

By deconstructing someone else’s music video, I know what to do when creating my own. This video in particular has taught me to use a wide variety of shots, and to ensure that I make my video diverse, interesting, and entertaining, for example, using a wide variety of enviroments. I will encode a variety of aspects into my music video for my audience to decode which will convey the narrative of the story I wish to portray.

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I analysed three different music videos which were largely different from one another in order to understand how the narrative and key themse are encoded (Hall) intoi a music video in order to achieve a postive reading from their audience. Two of the music video followed the typical conventions of what you would expect whenwatching a music video from that genre. One of the music videos was entirely performance based, one entirely narrative based, and the last one was a combination of both styles of music videos. Every one of the music videos I analysed had a main star, each oof them with a carefully constructed star image (Dyer) that was used to further coney their narative, or power as a performer. I carefully decoded the meanings of each aspect in these music videos (Hall), in order to understand how and why they chose to represent their narrative visually the way that they did. Whether they chose an illustrative narrative, an amplified one, or one that chose disjuncture, each music video had cultural codes (Barthes) included in order to represent what the stars enviroment was like, e.g. an old coutry town, a mansion, or a glamourous studio. These immediately gives us insight before the video even begins into what kind of lives the main stars of the videos are living. Below are the three music videos that I analysed;