Theories of Narrative - Toderov and Propp

Todorov(1st on the Right) is a Franco-Bulgarian philoshoper who came up with
theory to the classical Hollywood one. He believed this was the real narrative.

• Equilibrium
  
• Disruption
  
• Resolution
  
• New Equilibrium

Whereas Propp (2nd on the right) analysed the basic plot of Russian folk stories. He beleived that anrrative could be broken down into 8 key points:

1. The Hero (protagonist)
2. The Villian (antagonist)
3. The Donor (Provider)
4. The Helper
5. The Father
6. The Dispatcher
7. The Princess
8. The False Hero

Neither of these theories I can really apply to my music video as I beleive my music video followes none of these structures. Its not really a 'story' music video and therefore cannot be anaylised by either of there theories. The only thing I could possibly link this theory with my music video is the fact that it spanes a period of time allowing some story element to show in my video. However, I would nt say this is the strong est demonstration of this theory.

Levi-Strauss and Binary Opposition and how this links to my music video

Claude Levi-Strauss aruged that the stucture of different

narratives was dependent on binary opposition ( a conflict between two qualities or terms), these inturn can then form a narrative.

Gender
Gender stereotypes are organised through gender stereotypes.

The constriction of gender roles in narratoives lead to a series of binary oppositions (as seen above in the table).

Eg. Dominant vs. Subordinate

DOMINANT

• Male
  
• White
  
• Middle Class
  
• Middle aged
  
• Hetrosexual
  
• Able-bodied

SUBORDINATE

• Female
  
• Other ethnic groups


• Working Class
  
• The young, the old
  
• Homosexuel, bisexual
  
• Disabled

Example - The Western

Example - The wars in Irap and Afganistan

If anything my music video goes completely against this concept and breaks sterotypes showing a woman strong, achieving her goals and getting somewhere in life adbecoming a performer. Is doesn't really feature and binary opposites as she is the only person featured throughout of the music video.

Narrative Theory's and how my video uses this theory

Narrative is the way the story is organised.
The following list are all elements that are part of the Narrative Theory:

• Time
• Closure
• Enigma

Time

The narrative theory presents a period of time it covers and does it go in chronical order.

My video uses a flashback but not in obivous way as we see two sides to my artist due to a hiar vcut incident I had between filming. I used the "haircut" so that when we see when she is performing she has a shoter hair cut and this is part of the flashback and slow tranisition are used to show this. I would say my music video spans over 1 year.

Closure

The lose ends of the narrative is tied up and the audience is never left thinking what happens next.

My video follows this part of the theory as it doees not leave the audience hanging and has a nice ending whereby the ending make sense with what the has been going on throughout the video.

Enigma

The enigma is the problems created within a narrative and the problems that occured.

There are no real problems within my music videos that are created and resolved.

Classical Hollywood Narrative

This narative is linear and is in a diffinate sequences. They have few sub plots and has a tendency towards closure.

My music video does not follw this structure as it's quite realistic and isn't glamourised in the setting or costume. It doesn't follow any particular sequences of events and flashes back and forth between settings.

The five stage model

Narrative can also be seen as a sequence of different events or section within the actual text. Each events or section has its own function and meaning. In this model there ae five distinct stage through which the narrative is created in.

1. Exposition

This is the part of the film whre the narrative introduces the setting and the characters to the film audience.

2. Development

This is the stage in he film whre the storyline is developed and moe characters are introduced.

3. Complication

In this stage of the film's narrative where we are presented with a complicating event that will effect the lives of the main protagonist within the film.

4. Climax

Within this stage of the film narrative the dramatiic tension is at its upmost and the secrets or enigmas of all the previous actions are revealed. Also this is the point in the film where there are oftn confrontation between the two characters who representt the "good" and the "evil" in the story.

5. Resolution

This is the end of the film which usually holds the resolution or a sequence where stability s re-enstablished and clam has been restored.

The 'five stage model' doesn't really fit wht my music video either as its not really a sotry telling music video so therefore doesn't follow these steps.

Survey Monkey

I have collated my results and this is what I have found.

Q.1) Only females answered my survey and I beleive this could be becuase of the style of my music video as it very female lead maybe this put some men off.

Q.2) 75% of the popel that anwsered my survey were in the 17-19 age range and 25% were in the 30+. I belive this could be becuase my music video is aimed at these two age ranges with young people being able to relate to the person feature in the music video and the 30+ due to the sedate and sophiscated song and video style.

Q.3) Everyone that took my survey siad they enjoyed my music video.

Q.4) Furthermore everyone who took the survey beelived the video fitted the song.

Q.5) I had a split decision on this question with 50% giving my music and video combination a 3/5 and 50% giving it a 5/5. I am not quite sure why people didn't think the video and music combination worked maybe becuase this is a type of music video that isn't seen very often.

Q.6) Everyone who took the survey beleive it represented the artist perfectly and I am truely glad about this.

Q.7) This questioned asked everyone to state their favourite part of my music video. i have used the site www.wordle.net to generate set of words with the biggest in the pic being the most common words people use. As you can clearly see "scenes","good" and "park" were the most common and this is in reference to the park scenes, throughout my music video.

Q.8) Everyone who took this survey said they would but my artist single this is a very positive answer as this would mean in the music wqorld the music video would also have many views on sites like www.youtube.com.

Q.9) Was for anyone who answerewd no to the last question so is not needed.

Q.10) This question was also split down the middle with 50% beleiving that my music video looked professional and 50% beleiving my music video looked amatuer.

Survey

I created a survey on www.surveymonkey.com as this was a more sophisticated way of getting this vital information for my research into the success (HOPEFULLY!) of my music video. This is also a great site as it helps easily collate my answers ad all the information.

This is the link for my survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VHTTJBY

Completed digi paks

Digi-pak front cover

This is the front image for my digi-pak. Now with the two most important parts of the digipak done i will simply find other imaes for the rest of my digi-pak.

The Advert

This is my magazine advert. It carries all the conventions a normal advert would have with, comments form critics. Hope you like it!!!

Digi-pak photo update

This is my tracklist as part of my digi-pak. I have done a photo shoot with my artist and obtained some great photos for my digi-pak so this will all be finished soon.

Analysis of finished video

This is the anaylis of my music video.

Picture i have sorted out for my digipak or advertisment.

So our deadline for the digipak and advertisment is Friday 19th March 2010 so I have been looking through my music video to find some picture to use for these two things as time is running out and I need to sort out these last pieces of my project. Here are how the photos are coming out so far:


The above two pictures are taken from my music video.


The above two images have been edited with photo editing site called Picnik (www.picnik.com). This allows you to edit photos for free and has some great effect which has definately upgraded the level of my work.