Research: Narrative.

Will your text follow typical narrative patterns?


Propp's Theory
     Propp's theory is that he believes that many stories are filled with characters that have specific roles. According to Propp the eight main characters are -
* The Hero
* The Villain
* The Helper
* The Dispatcher
* The Donor
* The Princess
* The Father
* The False Hero
Within our video it will follow this narrative pattern in a little way such as a couple of these roles being played by our characters. In our music video there will only be one person being filmed however there is another character that the audience will just get the feeling for which is what we wanted to achieve. So there is a girl being filmed and within this theory she is 'The hero'. The hero is someone who is wanting to find something because there is a lack or want of it within their life. Therefore for this we are going to have her looking innocent and very alone on the shots, using long shots and close ups of her looking around corners for this thing. The idea is that she is trying to find her ex-boyfriend which is the feeling that the audience will get from other key shots shown to them. The boy is 'the villain' meaning that he is causing the conflict and stopping the villain. So relating to our video using this, the boy will be stopping the girl from happiness and in the video even though she wants to find him she doesn't at the same time as she knows what he is capable of. We will be showing this through her searching everywhere on our location but looking very scared, innocent and nervous.
     As 'the hero' is the centre of the narrative and 'the villain' is the conflict, stopping the hero from doing what she wants, our characters following these roles in Propp's theory will give us a very good narrative showing 'Todorov's theory' with the equilibrium, disruption and re-equilibrium.

Levi-Strauss's Theory
     Levi-Strauss's theory is that all meaning is shown through the 'Binary Oppositions'. This is two opposite things such as love and hate and is shown throughout lots of media. Our video follows the Weak vs Strong and Good vs Bad from the Example Binary Oppositions in Westerns from this theory. The Good vs Bad Binary Opposition in our video is the girl who is being filmed is put as the good because the audience automatically feel sorry for her seeing she is clearly hurt and very scared. The dark atmosphere where we will be filming will also have an effect on this opinion of the audience. Therefore with this they automatically know that her ex-boyfriend she is looking for is the Bad because our video clearly shows our audience that he has put her in this way. This then leads on to show that the Weak vs Strong Binary Opposition has also been followed by our video with the girl being weaker than this man, as he has all the power over her so she is the weak one and he is the strong.

Natalie.