Narrative refers to the ways in which a story is told. And a story can be told in lots of different ways.
The story of Aladdin is very complicated, and has been passed down from person to person for many hundreds of years. There are lots and lots of different versions of it (in the original, Aladdin was Chinese and the story was set in China!), but here is the version I am going to tell, off the top of my head
There was a young man called Aladdin who lived in Baghdad, many years ago. He was very poor and wanted to be rich. One day he found a magic lamp, nd in the lamp was a genie who gave him three wishes. Aladdin wanted to be rich and for the princess to love him. So he wished to be rich, but the princess didn't love him. Then he wished to be a prince, but the princess still didn't love him. Then he realised that true love cannot be wished for, so he used the last wish to set the genie free. Also, there was Jaffar, and a parrot.
There is nothing wrong with this story, but it kind of sucks. Why? Because it hasn't been made interesting. The interesting elements which tell a story are called narrative. These could be shot types, character types, cool colours, funny voices. Maybe I could take the story of Aladdin and set it in modern day London. Maybe I could add more fight scenes, some time travel, and some cyborgs. Maybe the story could be told backwards, and it could be in black and white. All these things would make this basic story archetype more interesting.
Music videos are not typically considered to be 'narrative media'. But they tell a story like anything else. These stories may be very simple:
The band are really cool and edgy
But if a title card came up saying 'The band are really cool and edgy', it would not work. It might workl in a postmodern sense, but it wouldn't actually be cool or edgy. So the producer needs to encode the 'story' that the band are cool and edgy. This could include
- Extreme close ups of scowling faces
- MES of spitting on floor
- Edgy, punky costume codes
- Gritty black and white
- Bleak, run down setting
These different elements 'tell the story' that the band are cool and edgy, without saying it. It is important that music videos do not 'tell' but 'show'. This is because music videos tend to be about three minutes long, and also have to feature a song in it's entirety.
Types of music video
Andrew Goodwin argued in 1992 that there are broadly three types of music video: performance, narrative and abstract/conceptual.
- Performance - a band plays the song
- Narrative - a story is told
- Conceptual - cool weird images ping around the screen
Most often, music videos will combine two or more elements of these. For example, a narrative video may cut between 'story' and 'performance', and in many cases may also have the artist performing in some scenes, furthering the narrative in others, and sometimes even doing both at once!
Some music videos have very clear narratives, some have vague and loose narratives, some music videos have no clear narrative, and some music videos simply have performance. From the point of view of your music video, you must have at least some performance and at least some narrative
Examples of music videos
All these examples are Radiohead videos because I used to really like Radiohead...
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| I'm in this picture |
Just
This video has a very clear narrative that is almost completely separate from the performance. Even if we never find out what happened, it still presents a straightforward story with a twist ending. This video also cuts between the narrative and the shots of the band performing, and, slightly confusingly, reveals at the end that the band are diegetically situated in the world of the narrative. Music videos can do this kind of high level postmodern storytelling very easily!
Street Spirit
This video has a loose narrative. It uses elements of media language to tell a loose story that communicates a vibe and an aesthetic more than a clear account of things that happened. Again, the band are performing
Paranoid Android
This video is an abstract video. It has little relation to the band or the song, although they do turn up at one point. Arguably it tells a story about two teenage boys finding a goldfish and getting in to adventures, but this is splitting hairs. I remember seeing this video on a screen in Virgin Records in Cork in Ireland where I grew up and it absolutely blew my mind. I had to find out absolutely everything about this band and the song. So as a piece of advertising, it was extremely effective. This video contains some 'adult content'.
Ideoteque
This is a live performance and doesn't count as a music video. However I was at the gig. In 2003. I was one of the blurry waving hands. I had just done my GCSEs. I was pretty close to the stage but this recording is way more exciting than the actual event, because of the sweeping shots and editing and exciting cross cutting between audience and band.