2. What is a narrative?
• A narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
• It is used within some music videos and can be shot in a particular order. Most
narratives however, have a simple beginning, middle and end structure, and can
sometimes include a moral or a message.
3. My Music Video
• My music video is completely narrative based.
• The song itself seems very story-like in terms of the lyrics, as they seem to be words of
advice to someone who has to take some form of medicine. It is almost like there is a
conversation within the lyrics that forms a story of someone's struggles and challenges
in life
• For this reason, I decided to base my music video on the lyrics within the song, and try
and represent this using a narrative within my music video about a girl who appears to
drink and party a lot, and to which then takes its toll on her and makes her consider
what she is doing. This occurs when her boyfriend meets her to talk about his worries,
only to have them justified when he finds a bottle of alcohol in her bag. The girl then
has the choice to take two separate paths and this is shown during a split screen.
4. Narrative examples: the start
These jump cuts give
the audience hints
that the character
may have been out
the following night
and also tells us she is
a female
The audience is questioned
as they would wonder why
her boyfriend would want to
meet in the woods, this is the
start of the disruption within
the narrative
5. The disruption + ending
The disruption occurs when a
new character is introduced
into the video. Her boyfriend
finds the alcohol and tries to
talk to her about it, but to no
avail as the female character
refuses help
The split screen portrays
the act of choices, one in
which being positive the
other being negative.
6. The point of my narrative
• My narrative choice is to grab the audience attention about the serious issues behind
drinking alcohol and not seeking help about it if it turns into an addiction
• This is especially the case within young people as more are starting to drink underage
• I also want to highlight the impact of choices that people make in their life. This is
represented via the use of the split screen at the end of the video. On the left, the
female character makes a positive decision to throw away the alcohol bottle and try
and start her life over, where as on the right, her negative choice is to make matters
worse and turn to tablets for comfort about her issues as well as drink, to which she
sadly takes too many which leads to death. I wanted my video to have a hard hitting
impact on the realities we face in life, especially as young teenagers in todays world,
and have done this through the use of a strong powerful narrative.
