‘Media text rely on cultural experiences in order for audiences to easily make sense of narratives’ Explain how you used conventional or experimental narrative approaches in one of your production pieces.

I am going to discuss the ideas of narrative in relation to my advanced portfolio, which was a music video for Linkin Park’s cover of Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’.

As it was a rock (nu metal) cover of a popular pop song I decided to look into other nu metal songs, and pick apart the key points that they used to engage their audience. I looked at Linkin Parks music video for ‘In the end’. The song is about the struggles of growing up and how life isn’t worth living but the video was created to lighten and juxtapose the lyrics. The song starts and ends with the piano which symbolised the cycle of life, at the start of the music video we can see a lifeless desert but during and nearing the end of the video rain comes down and spawns life in the form of flowers, rivers and butterflies. Although it would be hard to relate this format of the music video to mine, I liked the idea of juxtaposing lyrics and visuals, and so I decided do the same in certain parts of my narrative.

Goodwin has 8 principles to his theory, I looked at; ‘there is a relationship between the music and the visuals (with visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics), and decided the relationship between my lyrics and visuals would be that they contradict. As the song was about the emotions of a scorned lover “See how I’ll leave with every piece of you”, I decided to oppose these lyrics with visuals of a stereotypical couple, but as my narrative was fragmented it does show the breakup between them as well. Todorovs theory of narrative states the stages of equilibrium, disequilibrium and ultimately a new equilibrium being formed. The audience can engage with the video as there is an understanding of equilibrium, this being the couple happy together which many people can relate to. Although the narrative is fragmented, using this theory allows for a clear storyline to be set and followed by the audience.