Narrative structure in music videos

Narrative structure in music videos

What is Narrative structure?

This the way a media text, either film, music video or even poems, create a series of events creating meaning, usually with reaching a set end goal

The narrative structure in music videos allows the musician to tell a story throughout the video, that usually works along with the lyrics. There are many different types but a clear narrative structure involves a linear structure, which is a straight line. with beginning, middle and end. Another more detailed example is one developed by Tzvetan Todorov, who developed the three part structure into a five part structure: 1: the narrative starts with an equilibrium, 2. something disrupts the equilibrium and creates an unbalance, 3. there is an aim to fix this equilibrium and 5. the characters succeed in creating balance again, or establish a new equilibrium.

Analysing a music video's narrative structure:

For this task, I chose Alt-j's "Breezeblocks" because while maintaining a clear structure with a beginning, middle and end, the whole video is backwards, creating a plot twist as the audience figures out what has happened.

The beginning:

Firstly, we see the female character, drowned in the bath tub, and then a man sitting next to her on the floor, covering his face with his hands, where we can see a wedding ring. We can see that something violent has occurred, but don't know who has done it yet. After, we see that the man has pushed her in, with a cinder block in his hands. The story has ended with a murder, but for the viewers, it has only just started. The girl is trying to run away from the man, as he gets more and more aggressive (but in this structure, his aggression becomes less)

The middle:

The middle part is the fight scene, we see the woman aiming a glass bottle at her rivals head, and then they are wrestling on the floor, and then up on the table. We are then introduced to the final character, a young girl who is visibly distressed as we see closeups on her face and she has been crying. Then, while she is being pushed against a bookshelf, we see a knife has fallen on the floor, and it returns to the woman. This is when the motives of the characters starts to be clear.

The end:

The man is knelt next to the girl who has been behind a curtain and he removes the duck tape from her mouth. It reveals that it was the woman who had been dangerous, and abusing their child, whereas the man has been trying to protect her, and save her from the violent mother. 

We then get flashbacks to the start of the video so we can be reminded how it all ended. I really enjoyed this music video because its nothing like I've seen before. I love how the gender stereotypes have been reversed and how the whole video was backwards, slowly revealing the plot to us.