Adjustment: Performance/Narrative Balance

We have decided from our audience feedback and our own judgement that more narrative is needed in our video to keep up the pace and also to keep the audience intrigued and interested. In our research we found out that music videos of our genre are typically either be purely performance, or they can be half narrative and half performance. Initially we thought about having it solely performance but because of the type of song that it is, and because of its lyrics we felt that this wouldnt work. So we went for around 70:30 performance, narrative. Our audience research suggested that we need more narrative and having produced the anamatic, we agree. To look at how we can add more narrative to our piece (with out making it literal and cheesy) I looked at a few existing music videos.

Taylor Swift's main narrative in 'Mean'

I have previously analysed this video earlier on so I will just focus on the main narrative element. From the performance, this video cuts to 3 separate narrations.

The first one it cuts to is the boy in the changing rooms being picked on by the American football lads. This scene has no obvious relation to Taylor Swift other than the fact that they are going through the fact that they are going though the same sort of thing. This isolation keeps the audience interested as they are wondering the relation and they begin to emphathise with a new character.

The next narration scene that it cuts to is of a girl in a sandwitch board being bullied. Again, this is a mutually exclusive event from Taylor Swift however the feelings and thought behind it are common.

The last narration scene that this video cuts to is a girl who isnt allowed to sit with some other girls because of the colour of her dress. Like the previous 2 cuts this scene is not directly related, just by the theme of bullying.

The lyrics in 'mean' are quite general about a guy being mean, and what will be the outcome in the future. Because the lyrics are so general, they can fit to all three of the scenes above. Our music video however is quite specified, and the lyrics are tailored to what we assume is her past relationship. Because of this we wont really be able to use this type of narration in our video as it wouldnt relate at all to the message or lyrics.

Kelly Clarkson's narration in 'My Life Would Suck Without You'

'My life would suck without you' uses a different type of narration to Taylor Swift's 'mean'. 'Mean' uses the general lyrics to show other events of the same nature. It stops the song being as personal to the artist. 'My life would suck without you' however uses flashbacks to make the song more personal to the artsit. The song starts with a performance of Kelly on a swing, however it then immdeiately goes to 2 children in a park.  We can tell that this is a flash back because the colours have been edited in post production to be more intensified. We aren't aware straight away that it's a flash back to Kelly's past, however when the boy gives the girl a bracelet we begin to realise.

The flashbacks are all sequential, keeping the continuity. It switches between the flashbacks current narrative frequently. One of the ways inwhich it does this is by focusing in on an object which is common in both the past and the present. The bracelet which the boy gave her when they were young is used.

It zooms in quickly to it and then zooms out again, but when its is zoomed out it is on her wrist. This link between the 2 narratives is very affective and its a technique that we may wish to use in our storyboard.

A technique which is used to switch between performance and narrative is 'flash white'. This is where the screen flashes to white and then as the flash disappears we see the new setting/scene. This can look amature and cheap in many music videos as its used for the sake of. The reason that it works so well in this video is because it relates, and looks like the lights are creating the effect. We plan to use bright lights in our video and so this may be a technique that we consider as it would be a good way to differentiate past from present.

The narrative sections comprises of 2 parts.. the past/ the flashbacks, and the present day in her appartement with her boyfriend. The flashbacks are there to show the length of their relationship, to show that there is reason and meaning behind her words. For instance if they were only going out for 2 weeks, the words 'my life would suck with out you' wouldnt mean an awful lot. The present narrative shows her and her boyfriend play fighting and arguing, she is throwing his things out the window and he is chasing her around, ultimately trying to show that although they have their differences and arguements her life would suck without him. These playful arguing scenes also keep an upbeat element to the song. Our song is slightly heavier than this so we may try to add a playful element to ours to keep the atmosphere from being too heavy.

Elements of this video that we would like to take further in our own music video are to keep the music video playful and fun. We could do this by having happy sections in the flashbacks, and getting the actress to be more free and happy in the performance scene. We will also look further into how we can switch between the narrative and the performance scenes. We will experiement on the macs to see which give us the best effect for our song.



Our Ideas for a Narrative

We sat down as a group to come up with ideas for what our narrative would involve. As ideas were suggested we came up with issues that might arise, this enabled us to keep a balanced and practical thought process. For example when the idea of a goose chase was suggested, we decided that it could look too cheesy for our song and also it didnt have a great deal of relevance.

We were then left with 2 ideas which we liked for different reasons. Arguments with her boyfriend, and flashbacks to when they were in love. We liked the idea of arguments as it related well to our song and it kept with Andrew Goodwin's theory that the music video is meant to be the audio or the story of the song. However we decided that after looking at Kelly Clarkson's 'My life would suck without you', that our song needed an upbeat element to it to keep our audience engaged and also to give are demography a role model to aspire to (who wants to aspire to someone who is miserable?). This is why we decided to use it along with flashbacks to when the couple were in love. The flashbacks will consist of them being happy together, and then him doing something which upsets/annoys her. This keeps the upbeat element however also works well with the lyrics.

We also thought about having the actress walking down the street, and in the end of the video, we see where she was going to, thus resolving the enigma. This concept was too linear and also to monotinous, as only so much can happen as you walk down a street. However we did like the idea of her walking down the street as we felt that it was a constant element which could keep the interest of our demography fixed. We could use this concept as a performance/narrative element to string our music video together.