I viewed 3 different music videos and attempted to identify the specific themes, techniques and amplified narratives used.  Several of these videos were heavily thematic and focused on issues such as disability and alcoholism. I also looked at the structure of the videos and whether they were linear or episodic.

Mumford & Sons: Lover of the Light

• Overview of the narrative content: The narrative is generally linear however occassicanly the camera cuts to him later on the beach and also a deer.
• Overview of the structure:  The narrative is linear with an occasional flash forward throughout the video.
• What is the story: Idris Elba wakes up and makes himself breakfast. He then puts on a business suit and goes outside where it is revealed that he is blind and he runs off into the wilderness and ends up on the seaside on a cliff where he yells out at the sea.
• Is there an ending and if not, how does it end and how does it make you feel? In the ending the blind man runs off into the forest without his cane and is running freely through the wilderness and eventually runs to the edge of a beautiful cliff. I think this is supposed to represent him freeing himself from his disability and running away.  This makes me happy as he clearly is shown to be much happier and more free running through the wilderness.

Kodaline: Brother

• Overview of the narrative content: The narrative content is illustrative
• Overview of the structure: It is a linear structure with a theme based around loss and grief.
• What is the story: The story depicts a young boy dealing with the loss of his older brother and he has some kind of dream where he imagines his brother is still around with him as a ghost as he slowly deals with the death throughout the video.
• Is there an ending and if not, how does it end and how does it make you feel?: The ending shows him waking up and his brother is gone and the parents come in and comfort him as he slowly accepts that his brother is gone. This music video made me sad due to it’s depiction of the younger brother dealing with the loss very well and it made me feel bad for the boy.

Ed Sheeran: Bloodstream

• Overview of the narrative content: The narrative is disjunctive as it cuts between different parts of his day and ends with him burning everything.
• Overview of the structure:  The video cuts between different aspects of his daily life and him burning all of his stuff.
• What is the story: The story is an aging musician who is sick of his life and ends up burning all of his music memorabilia
• Is there an ending and if not, how does it end and how does it make you feel? The video ends with him sitting in his mansion all alone with no one and no more possessions and it makes me feel bad for the musician as he realizes he has not made much of his life and has wasted a lot of his time on drugs and alcohol.

3 Narratives of my own:

• Drunk man imagines he has a family in his home, wakes up alone. Alone
• A man is sent to jail for a crime and comes out to find that he is unfamiliar with the modern world. Left behind
• New kid at a school is very lonely and has no friends. Unfamiliar world

In the future this will help me as I better understand the techniques and different aspects which go into making music videos which will help when making my own as I can use them to improve my music video.