Anamatic

3 initial ideas in relation to narrative of video/ film etc

Conventions of form and genre

Theories

Tim’s Theorists

Tim O’Sullivan argues that all media texts tell us some kind of story. Through careful mediation media texts offer a way of telling stories. ‘The story of us is as a culture or set of cultures.’

Kate Domaillie stated that every story ever told can be filtered into one of eight narrative types. Each of these narrative types has a source; an original story on which others are based. These stories are as follows: Candide, Cinderella, Love, Circe, Faust, Orpheus, Romeo and Juliet and Tristen and Iseult. Without love, there would not be us; love is the ultimate narrative.

Sven Carlson (1999) suggested that music videos in general videos fall into two rough categories: performance or conceptual clips.
Performance contains filming from live performances.

Bordwell and Thompson (1997) deterred the difference between story and plot.
Structure of narrative:

·       Linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution.

·       High degree of narrative closure

·       A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

Equilibrium of Diagesis: Todorov (1977)

Claude Lèvi-Strauss (1958) had ideas about narrative amount to the fact that he believed all stones operated to certain clear Binary Opposites e.g. good vs evil

Binary Opposites – mise-en-scene

Protagonist	Antagonist
Colour
Location
Country	Urban

Michael Shore (1984) argues that music videos are recycled styles.
For recycled styles look at Buddy Holly by Wheezer (1984).

·       Happy Days was released in 1970 but was set in 1950’s America

·       Used original footage from Happy Days

·       Our understanding of this look is based purely and simply on other media products.

·       Look is more important than meaning (surface without substance)

Becky’s Theorists

Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory
Looks at how the audience view women who are presented in the media. She states that women are there to be seen and that the use of the camera portrays them as sexual objects through shot types and movement.

1.    How men look at women

2.    How women look at themselves

3.    How women look at other women

Mulvey focuses on:

·       Emphasising curves of the female body

·       Referring to women as objects rather than people

·       This display of women is how men think they should be perceived

·       Female viewers view the content through the eye of a man

·       Women are often sexualised as objects and viewed based on sexual desire and the way they look

Richard Dyer’s Star Theory
Star Theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are constructed by institutions for financial reasons and are built to target a specific audience or group of people. Dyer’s theory can be broken down into three sections:

1.    Audience and institutions – Stars are made to make money for that purpose alone. Audiences want to consume what they think is the ideal. The institution then modifies the stars image around that target audience. They make a star on what they think the audience want.

2.    Construction – The star is built for an audience and is not an actual person; a persona is created for the audience to identify and so stars can differentiate between different stars and why they like them or not. The star is built specifically with someone’s signature.

3.    Hegemony (cultural beliefs) – Leadership or dominance especially by one step or social group over them. We relate to the star because they have a feature that we admire or share with them. This develops form an admiration into an idolization.

Quotes from Richard Dyer
“A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials e.g. advertising, magazines as well as films and music.” (1979)
“Stars are commodities that are produced by institutions”
“A star is a constructed image, represented across a range of media and mediums”
“Stars represent and embody certain ideologies”

Tessa Perkins – Stereotypes
Stereotyping is not a simple process and contains a number of assumptions that can be challenged.

1.    Stereotypes are not always negative – ‘youths’

2.    They are not always about minority groups or less powerful

3.    They can be held about ones groups

4.    They are not rigid or changing – they are difficult to change and take a long time to change

5.    They are not always false – where else would stereotypes come from?

Implications of stereotypes – usually we’re wrong because we base our stereotypes on people we have never experienced.

Hypodermic needle Theory
Hypodermic needle theory is the idea that messages are directly injected to passive audiences through the use of media, such as radio and television. The theory was created in the 20's and has since then been outdated and has been found to have many flaws such as;

• Very out of date and invalid
• Not all people consume media in the same way 
• Not everyone watches the news/consumes media in the same way
• Audiences are not simply passive, more up to date theories have proved this

Treatment

Treatment

·       the song is about drugs and past life experiences

·       I will have one actor lip syncing the lyrics; he will look rock/punk and will stay in the same costume throughout.

·       Two others who are performing with guitars in their own shots.

·       I will be filming in an urban location, such as Hull, queen’s gardens, under a bridge, for example down Humber Street.

·       Long shots of the actor in different locations lip syncing also dancing.

·       When the song hits the chorus, the mood and colour of the video will be brighter and the actor will act happy and dance

·       I want the video to have a psychedelic look with a wide use of different colours, including pinks, purples and blues.

·        The actor will be seen reminiscing of the past with flashbacks, these flashbacks will be of him in dull areas, with little or no use of colour and then we will see him in the present as he lip syncs, happy and more alive.