1B - Narrative

1b) Narrative

In the Indie genre, it is a common convention for the music video to be heavily narrative based rather than performance based. Artists of the genre tend to create a type of story in their video which hooks the audience and attempts to develop a personal relationship through a deeper meaning. The story behind the video is the emotional journey of a young girl who has lost someone close to her.  Jean Baudrillard played an important role in the music video due to his theory of stimulation that I relied heavily on to create the story. The process of stimulation requires something to be presented without actually showing the real thing. The song ‘Autumn Leaves’ connotes the loss of a loved one, and in the music video, this loss is through their death. While the audience never visually experiences the death, it becomes evident to them through a range of signs. For example, the performer looks up to the sky, blows a kiss and waves, which can immediately be perceived as a connotation for death. Furthermore, he also believed there was a relationship between the music and visuals. My music video will support this, as there will be points in the video where what is happening on screen will match the lyrics of the song. For example, the lyrics ‘yesterday you were here with me’ will play over a flashback of the two best friends to emphasise the loss in the performer’s life, but also accentuate much happier times which is how the performer is choosing to remember her friend.

Some theories by Jameson are also significant in my music video, most specifically intertextuality. The black and white effect throughout the video links directly to another Ed Sheeran music video 'The A Team'. In this video, a young girl becomes homeless and addicted to drugs, eventually dying. The music video for Autumn Leaves could perhaps accentuate the story of the girl from ‘The A Team’ best friend who is struggling to come to terms with the sudden loss.

I chose to challenge Vernallis’ theory that ‘something drives the video forward but it is often not the narrative’ as it has become evident through researching the indie genre that a typical indie target audience prefer experiencing a storyline as they enjoy videos that are modest and meaningful so that they can relate them to their real lives, whereas a performance based video would be difficult to relate to and stop them from developing a personal relationship with the song and artist. Additionally, I will go against another of Vernallis’ theory that ‘there is not necessarily a balance between narrative and performance’ as I do not plan to use a huge aspect of performance as I will that it would take away the heavy emotion in the narrative, and would also harden the audience’s ability to connect with the story if I kept jump cutting to an artist performing the song. However, there may be some points in the video where the performer will mime a sentence or two from the song as if she is saying it to herself. For example ‘Do you ever wonder if the stars shine out for you?’ as this will further highlight what she is feeling following the loss.

My narrative did not comply with Todorov’s five stage narrative structure. His first stage is ‘equilibrium’ which is essentially where everything is good, however my music video will start with a close up of the performers face, in order to capture the sadness she is feeling, which therefore disagrees with his theory. He then goes on to say that there is a something happens that ‘disrupts the equilibrium’ however my video will not include a disturbance of any kind as it is about the performer being able to progress with her life and to always remember her friend in a cheerful and blissful way, eventually leading to a kind of resolution where she is able to move forward with her life.