Narrative functions within music videos

 Today I looked at Andrew Goodwin Narrative Theory. He believes that pop videos are built around songs. He came up with these 3 narratives of music videos: 

3 types of narratives of music videos: 

1. Illustration - the video tells the story 
2. Amplification - the images are amplified by the lyrics and the artist usually take on a role in the video 
3. Disjuncture - when there’s little connection between the lyrics and video or where the video contradicts the lyrics. 

Music videos usually reflects the genre of music as well as to reinforce the artists image. While there are different approaches to the narrative/non narrative presentations within the video they almost always follow the key tone/styles and visuals of the genre. 

Illustration 

For illustration I chose Katy Perry's Last Friday Night from the album 'Teenage Dream' which was released in 2010. In this music video, it tells the story of the lyrics about what happened on her Friday night. The bright, colourful, typical American girl scenario attracts young teenagers and is PG friendly. It is happy, upbeat and set as if it is a teenage, comedy, child friendly film.

This is clearly a high budget, expensive music video to make as it involves lot's of actors, props, costume, hair and makeup. In this music video, she is recapping her memory of what happened last Friday night. The music video helps to tell the story as the lyrics tell us the events which took place. During the lyrics, we watch as she enters a party and has a wild night.

In this music video, Perry is presented to be playing quite a nerdy character, she doesn't seem to look like the other girls in the part and is presented as the weird, geeky girl. The full head brace and glasses reflect that she is playing a nerd at her first typical high school party. The stereotype of this nerdy girl tells the story as she likes the popular looking 'jock; character. As she plays a stereotypical, American nerd character, she transforms in the music video into a pretty, colourful, young and fun looking girl who is now perceived as the life of the party.  

The music video is created like a film, with an opening title sequence, a beginning, middle and ending, as well as credits and extras and bloopers. This music video sells her image that she is appealing to a young audience and is very clean and pg friendly. The bright colours, upbeat, fun video gained over 1 billion views on Youtube. 

AMPLIFICATION

As an example for amplification in music videos, I chose 'Judas' by Lady Ga Ga which was released in 2011 from the album 'Born This Way'. In this music video, the lyrics are about one of the 12 decibels of Jesus, the music video amplifies the lyrics using imagery.

 The music video opens with 12 men in leather jackets on motor bikes, all with the names of the disciples on their backs. We then see the artist on the back of the motor bike of a man dressed wearing a crown which symbolises Jesus. Her religious significance to this music video is often noticed, details include the cross on her bikini. 

The music video is mainly presenting Lady Ga Ga as a performer as she is dancing and singing. Most of the song is repeating the name 'Judas'.  

DISJUNCTURE 

For disjuncture, I picked Childish Gambino '3005' which was released in 2013. This music video has no correspondents to the lyrics or meaning of the song. it's just a video of the star on a ferris wheel sat next to a teddy bear which slowly comes alive. Usually disjuncture music videos are purposefully intended to show off the graphics, and special effects in order to make the artist be presented as cool, eye catching and also to show off the high budget of the music video. As the music video goes on, the teddy bear next to him looks more worn out as it comes to life. 

The lyrics are talking about his future and how he comes to accept the realism of life. The bear is intended to represent his childhood and innocence, as the time passes the bear gets more and more damaged as the artist talks about understanding that the world is not such.a good, happy place as he had thought when he was a child. 

The music video's purpose is to represent Gambino's growing up, as he realises that his friends aren't loyal, and falls into the circle of depending on materialistic items. He disappears at the end of the music video, leaving the bear there alone as he steps out into the real world to achieve something on his own.