Rules of Narrative

Narrative types:

Achillies - Destruction, flawless person.
Candide - Indiana Jones, James Bond.
Cinderella - Dream comes true, pretty woman.
Circe - The chase.
Faust - Selling soul to devil.
Orpheus - The loss of something personal.
Romeo & Juliet - Love story.
Tristen & Iseult - Love triangle.

Vladmir Propp studied and concluded the 7 types of narrative.

The villian.
The donor.
The helper.
Princess & Father.
The dispatcher.
Hero & Victim.
False hero.

Electronic Shaman

The Shaman is sometimes invisible and its only her or his voice and rhythm that anchor the visuals. he or she often shifts between multiple shapes.

At one moment the shaman animates dead objects or have 2 dimensional alter egos, seconds later he or she is shifting through time and so on.

A prime example of this could be Lady Gaga or even better would be David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust.

Narrative Clip, Art Clip and Performance Clip

Narrative Clip

The narrative Clip is most appropriately understood as a short silent movie to a musical background, the narrative clip followed a story that is visually easy to follow. A pure narrative clip contains no lip sync to the words.

The narrative structure is as followed.
We begin with the Equilibrium, the characters diegetic world before the events of the story unfold. The protagonist and the antagonist, the good and the bad. Then we have the disruption, caused by the antagonist, then followed by the quest of the protagonist to correct the antagonists bad deeds. The final part of the structure is the Climax/Resolution, followed by a Re- Equilibrium. The Re-Equilibrium being that the antagonist Robber is then captured by the Protagonist police officer.

A Classic Example of a performance clip would be
Example – Last Ones Standing



Art / Abstract Clip

A Art clip is a music video that contains no perceptible visual narrative and contains no lip synchronised singing, then it is a pure art clip. The clip also contains a various amounts of unrelated material and has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song. A prime example of this type of music video is.

Boards of Canada – Macquarie Ridge  

Performance Clip

In these kinds of music videos, we see the band or performer, playing their instrument to the camera head on, this method is often used to sell the artists, perhaps in their clothes in the sense that the performer is no longer a performer anymore and is now a materialization of the commercial exhibitionist.

Another type of performance within music videos is that of the televised band.

A prime example of performance videos could be Mumford and Sons ' Roll away your stone'

History of the Music Video

Music videos are short films or videos that accompany a song, often music has a video when it is released as a single. Music videos are often used to promote the certain song and the sales of a music recording. The origin of music videos are much older than the era in which they came into their own and became much more popular within the media, this period was the 1980s. before this time, these sort videos were described by various terms such as “filmed insert”, “promo film” or “film clip”. In the chinese entertainment business these videos were simply known as MTV’s because there network, were the ones which brought music video popularity to that country.
Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. Many music videos do not interpret images from the song's lyrics, making it less literal than expected.

My Project

For my media A2 coursework I will be attempting to create a music video, for a band and song of my choice.



I have the choice to work both individually or in a group.


For this I have decided to work in a group, as tackling the music video as a individual could be a sizable task considering I have other courses with projects to work on too.

Introduction to Media A2 - The Brief

This is a coursework unit.

You will engage with contemporary Media technologies to produce a media portfolio through a combination of two or more media and then present your research, planning and evaluation in electronic form ( a blog ).

This is designed to develop skills from your Foundation Portfolio.

There are 13 seperate briefs offered.

Each of them feature a main txt and two ancillary texts.

You can work individually or in a group.