The Narrative
The story of our music video follows a linear, multi stranded narrative, with the use of cutaways from the sleepover scene to the spooky story narrative. The reason we decided to do this is it makes the storyline easy to understand but also keeps the audience alert to what is happening and wanting to know what is going to happen next. Although we conform to media products that have a simple linear storyline with a beginning, middle and end, we develop it with the use of cutaways to a contrasting narrative it keeps the pace of the video going.
In my analysis of McFly’s ‘Here's Another One for The Radio’ I noticed the use of cutaways was prominent with it cutting from the bands performance to the people dancing. Our music video does conform to real media products forms and conventions, but rather than have the shots be from the same narrative and time like in McFly's video, our cutaways go from the sleepover scene to the spooky story that is being told by the main girl at the sleepover being shown visually to the audience.
Funtions and Meanings of Music Videos
Carol Varnallis' theory of important concepts to the way a music video is produced can be applied to our media product with what the theory says about the narrative aspect in music videos being followed in our music video.
Katy Perry's music video for 'One That Got Away' follows this theory with the narrative aspect of the music video being a visual response to the song, therefore, making the narrative easy to understand for the audience. We followed this form and convention as we wanted our media product to be a form of diversion for the audience to escape their everyday lives for a few minutes and focus on something fictional for entertainment (as said in Kats and Blumers theory).
Theories within our music video
Within this theory it also talks about how the ending of a music video may not have closure for the audience but it rather be left to their own interpretations. I have seen this done in David Guetta's music video for 'Titanium' which is open to the viewer’s judgment to what happens next to the lead role. This can be seen in our music video with the audience only knowing that the girl is upset about the fact that she does not know where her lover is, or even if he is alive or dead. We thought that this would be effective as it leaves fans or new comers watching the music video wanting to know what happens next to the girl, whether this be revealed in the next music video released as a continuation of the story or on the bands website.
The Use of Binary Opposites
Within our music video the use of Levi Strauss' binary opposites can be seen using colour correction. The different narratives of our music video use contrasting colour corrections so it’s easy for the audience to distinguish between the two. We decided on an orange tint vs blue tint to present the different moods within the narrative.
The use of the warm orange tint in the sleepover shots adds to the spooky and mysterious mood. While the blue tint for the spooky story creates a cold mood that could symbolise the main girl's sadness about not knowing where the boy is. We are challenging media products that exist as in music videos I have seen usually the same colour correction is used throughout, although with ours we use it in a create way to reflect the atmosphere within the narrative or the character's emotions.