Most Pop music CD covers are very bold and colourful and very eye catching. They usually have the artist on the front cover with bold clothing that stands out, or just a close up of the artist's face. Here are some examples below:
These are some definitions of Narrative Theory that I found on this website:http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=narrative
In media terms, narrative is the coherence/organisation given to a series of facts. The human mind needs narrative to make sense of things. We connect events and make interpretations based on those connections. In everything we seek a beginning, a middle and an end. We understand and construct meaning using our experience of reality and of previous texts. Each text becomes part of the previous and the next through its relationship with the audience.
Narrative Conventions:
When unpacking a narrative in order to find its meaning, there are a series of codes and conventions that need to be considered. When we look at a narrative we examine the conventions of:
Roland Barthes describes a text as
"a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation).
What he is basically saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter an absolute plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread if you like, and create an entirely different meaning. And so on. An infinite number of times. If you wanted to.
Narrative Structures:
There are many ways of breaking down narrative structure. You may hear a movie described as a "classic Hollywood narrative", meaning it has three acts. News stories have their own structure. A lot of work has been done by literary theorists to develop ways of deconstructing a narrative.
Tvzetan Todorov - suggests narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium
Vladimir Propp - characters and actions (31 functions of character types)
Claude Levi-Strauss - constant creation of conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual (light/darkness, movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate, control/panic), and to do with soundtrack. Binary oppositions.
These are some shots we may use in the performance part of our video. We would like to use the spiral shot on the lyric when she sings 'you' for a long note. However we would need to speed the shot up because when it was filmed it was quite slow. This could be quite difficult if it is part of the performance because it would mean that if Michaela is singing, she will have to sing quite slowly in order to be in time with the music.
This is some footage that we have edited again to help us with our editing skills and timing to fit to the music. I like some of the shots that we used, like the shots of the piano playing and also the reverse shots which I think are quite effective.
This is our lip syncing practice video which we edited today. We found that having the music playing in the background whilst filming was very helpful because, when it came to editing we knew what part Michaela was singing to. Some parts were difficult to fit to the music because of some timing issues but having practiced now, I think we all feel more confident about our performance part of the music video.
