In this presentation, intentions for and interpretations of the narrative of my music video are explored.

1. Interpretation And Intentions
By Matthew Haddock

2. Intentions for my Music Video
My intended narrative for my music video is the following:
• A politician authorises a drone strike that kills an innocent hostage, the son
of the hostage finds out and gives a threatening phone call to the politician,
leading him to become paranoid and hallucinate.
• The hostage’s son plans the assassination of the politician and buys a gun
online. As a result of his paranoia the politician takes hiding in his loft,
ignoring an important meeting. The hostage’s son wakes up, disappointed to
find news that the politician’s whearabouts are unknown, putting his plans
into disarray.
• Convinced by a colleague as well as his wife, the politician heads off to the
meeting, his entrance is photographed and uploaded to the internet. The
politician delivers a well-received speech, however, the hostage’s son sees
the photograph online and runs off to the meeting, taking his gun with him.
• On the way out of the meeting, the politician is suddenly attacked by the
hostage’s son, his political colleagues pull the hostage’s son away, but he
manages to pull out his gun and shoot the politician, security arrive too late,
and only manage to catch him after he is shot.

3. Viewing Intentions and
Roland Barthes
• My music video is very dense in terms of narrative, almost every sequence
moves the narrative forward in some way, meaning that it is possible to
miss some things on a cursory first viewing.
• I have always enjoyed films such as Mulholland Drive that require multiple
viewings to fully understand. I take no issue with the fact that some people I
have shown my music video to have required two viewings to fully grasp the
narrative.
• While I had an idea of my video’s narrative, I am open to different
interpretations of it. It may sound pretentious, but I believe that anything
someone makes in terms of art or media is the result of several unconscious
influences as well as deliberate decisions, and so the interpretations of
others are valid as they may uncover things that I had not realised myself.
• Roland Barthes’s concept of the Death of the Author argues that authorial
intentions should not be the focus of criticism, and that the interpretation of
the audience is more important when evaluating a work. I agree with this
concept and fully cede interpretative duties to the audience.
• If a work’s intended concept and themes are explained to the audience by
the creator, then there is no point in its existence, the work should be the
sole medium for the creator’s expression and should say all that they need
to say.

4. Interpretations of my Music Video
• When showing my music video to audiences, the majority put
together the outline of the narrative, however some interesting
interpretations did arise.
• One person thought that the politician character was a
businessman, and that the assassin character was threatening
his business.
• Another thought that the security guards in the last shot were
grabbing the politician to take him away (On first viewing
quite a few people didn’t notice the politician being shot in the
last shot, this is a result of the politician and assassin being at
opposite ends of the frame, a deliberate decision intended to
amplify the chaos of the sequence by forcing the viewer to look
at one side of the frame, potentially missing what is
happening, but being able to figure it out on a second
viewing.)

5. Specific Points of Ambiguity
• During these points in my music video, the narrative is not 100% clear:
• When the assassin character is looking at old home videos of himself and his father on his laptop, it
is not made explicit that they have a father and son relationship. I tried to make this easier to infer
through having the father character being played by the only adult actor in the music video,
showing his seniority over the character, as well as the fact that the newspaper featured in the
music video describes the killed hostage as a “Father of one” in the first sentence of the article,
however I do acknowledge that as the newspaper shot is brief, it is unlikely this could have been
understood without pausing the video.
• Some viewers did not realise that the characters were father and son, but they all understood that
the hostage character was important to the assassin character, I am satisfied with the fact that this
was communicated to the audience as it is key to the assassin’s narrative.
• At no point is it made explicit that the politician character is experiencing hallucinations, however I
think that by using unusual editing techniques such as cross-fading and jump-cuts that are
uncommon in the music video, I have conveyed the unreality of these sequences.
• Some audience members could not tell if the masked figure in the first hallucination sequence was
really in the room or just in the mind of the politician. I consider this a success, as by provoking
such questions from viewers, the sequence places the audience in the mindframe of the politician,
questioning whether what they are seeing is real or not. I see these differing interpretations as a
good example of conveying a feeling to the viewer, real or imaginary, the viewer understands the
distress felt by the politician in this scene.

6. Conclusions
• I consider my narrative of my music video to
be clear enough for an audience to
understand, however, I acknowledge that it
usually becomes clearer on a second viewing
due to its density of information.
• I do not see the different interpretations of my
music video as a mark of failure in creating an
understandable narrative; rather, they are an
example of healthy audience engagement.