Narrative Form

Narrative
For music videos there are thought to be three different forms of narratives, the narrative itself is the way in which these three elements are brought together:

• Story, when there is a sequence of events happening within the video that normally relate to the lyrics of the song, this is also known as a plot.
• Performance, when you see the artist performing the song, whether this is through playing a musical instrument or lip-syncing.
• Abstract, this is the use of visual techniques to add to the mood and feel of the video, these may have no meaning but are often entertaining for the audience.

Sven Carlson (1999) suggests that music videos generally fall into two rough groups, which he named performance clips and conceptual clips. Performance clips are of the artist lip-syncing, dancing or performing to the song, whilst conceptual clips show something artistic or ambitious. In one type pf performance the performer is not a performer anymore, he or she is a materialization of a commercial exhibitionist, creating an image to promote themselves.

According to Pam Cook (1985) the standard Hollywood narrative structure should have:

• Linearity of cause to effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution
• A high degree of narrative closure
• A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

Todarov (1977) created a narrative structure to present the conventional five stages of a narrative, these stages are followed very often in film and television which further proves Todarov's theory that most plots follow the same or similar paths.

1. A state of equilibrium at the outset
2. A distribution of the equilibrium by some action
3. A recognition that there has been a disruption
4. An attempt to repair the disruption
5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a structurallist which is someone who "searches for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activities". In 1958 he stated that he believed all stories presnted certain clear binary opposites, for examples good vs evil and rich vs poor. He says that there is often a use of colours, props and locations to represent these opposites.