Evaluate your music video in relation to narrative theories.

For my A2 coursework we had to create a music video for a song of our choice. As a group we chose the song 'Never Again' by Meaning in Masterpiece who are an independent indie band. We had to look at existing bands and their videos; in particular we focused on James Blunt, James Morrison and Coldplay. Narrative is important because it is the way the story is told which appeals to the audience as they want to know what is going on throughout the video as well as listening to the song; it provides structure and an explanation.



Todorov’s theory can be related to our music video as we have a protagonist, an antagonist and a somewhat helper but no real equilibrium is reached as he remains in a confused state. Our music video somewhat subverted this theory as we had a limited amount of people and the protagonist and antagonist are the only main characters. This structure is seen more often in films rather than music videos as there are always more characters in films than music videos but they can both have stories.



The five stage narrative structure which consists of exposition, development, complication, climax and resolution. The exposition in our music video is setting the scene of Jake Black being alone and walking through the park, along with the lyrics we can see how the video is being established. The development of the music video is when we start to see Jake is in a predicament with the path scene, this leaves the audience with an enigmatic feeling. The complication is when we see that there is a mysterious girl causing a problem and leaving him in a confused state. The climax is when he continuously sees her and meets the path with the signs saying move on or sleep on it and finally the resolution is him choosing his path. This theory is important to take into consideration when creating a product not only a film but also a music video because the audience will listen to the song and watch the video with which they will want it to go together so they know what is going on.



Another theory that can be related to our music video is Roland Barthes theory. He said that ‘a text is like a tangled ball of thread which needs to be unpicked so we can separate the colours’. In terms of a film or media text, this needs to be unravelled to find multiple meanings. He constructed four narrative codes which are Action & Enigma code, symbols and signs, points of cultural reference and simple description. Although our music video cannot be applied to all these narrative codes but the enigma and action code can be related because throughout the video there is a sense of enigma with this mysterious girl appearing wherever he goes which keeps the audience in suspense and makes them carry on watching the video.


A final theory that can be related our music video is by Levi-Strauss. Throughout our video there a blatant binary oppositions with the use of colour being black and white and also somewhat sanity and insanity because the protagonist keeps seeing his ex girlfriend out but she is not there in reality. In our music video there are limited characters being Jake Black, the mysterious girl and his friends. Binary oppositions are interesting to use in a video because it one keeps the audience engaged and it creates an enigmatic tone because we as the audience don’t know why this has been chosen.