Applying my music video production to the theoretical area of Narrative

The media product I created was a trip hop music video to the song ‘To Catch a Thief’ by the band Lovage. Other music videos within this genre have a very strong narrative to them and tell a story throughout the video. For example Karmacoma by Massive attack has a strong narrative but to get to the meaning behind it all you have to look past the abstract image it portrays just as you have to do with my music video/ So through my own interpretation of a Trip Hop music video I wanted to follow the same convention.

The music video I helped to create told the story of a male bunny character who had been kicked out of his house by his wife. As a result of this the bunny turns to crime. He only turned to crime because of his sorrow and as an audience we should feel sorry for him. The bunny costume the character is wearing connotes the idea of disguise and also innocence to what he is doing and had experienced. We hoped that the audience could see this behind the costume and look behind the abstract image it may portray.

As a group we thought a lot about the idea behind the narrative and all that was involved in creating this short story/film. As the narrative is so strong, it can easily be applied to narrative theory. When looking at this the music video I have created can be most closely related to Todorov’s theory of there being five stages to narrative:

- an equilibrium

- a disruption to this equilibrium by an event

- a realisation that a disruption has happened

- an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption

- a restoration of equilibrium – which may be a new equilibrium

In my media product I feel that the equilibrium was the positivity seen at the beginning through the bunny gaining help from a wise counsellor. The disruption of this was the crime that took place by the bunny. The realisation was being caught by the police and sadness seen by the bunny and then the attempt to repair was being put in jail to correct the wrongs and finally at the end of the music video the restoration of the equilibrium was seen as the bunny revisited the counsellor.

I believe that because of another theoretical area (Genre) the narrative of this media product had become very apparent and therefore easily related to narrative theory.