Narrative Theorists

Vladimir Propp's theory with regards to character roles is usually used within the film industry, however we firmly believe that we could adapt it to work in our music video. The narrative is based upon a typical mainstream love story between a male and a female, however there is a slight twist. Due to our singer telling the story of her emotions, her character is something we explore through the art of dance. Thus meaning our dancers (Sophie and Michael) are the narrative, or in Propp's theory the false hero is Sophie because in our artists head she is the person seeking the thing she cannot have and trying to cause trouble. Michael however in our artists' eye is the hero, because he creates her a sense of happiness and feels love for her, which is the role a hero has in a film.















The interpretations we have made from Propp's theory is something we believe will be reflected in our video, and therefore by proposing these efforts we feel that we now have a goal to create these characters through music and visuals.

Evidence Of Planning

Through the use of the social media site twitter it allows both Sanj and I to contact our media teachers at any time of the day. The tweets below show evidence of early planning, as we are organising a photoshoot for our artist, and a photoshoot and camera test shot session with our dancers to ensure that we are able to continue with our idea. We believe that this will give us good experience, and be helpful throughout our storyboard process.

The Narrative

After receiving feedback from peers with regards to our 25 word pitch, we realised that the narrative within our pitch wasn't as clear as it could be, thus the purpose of this post is to outline it. The narrative of our video will be expressed mainly through the contemporary dance by a male and female, and our artist.

The lyrics of the song are significantly important, so we broke them down to find the meaning, of what we believe Birdy, the original artist, wrote the song about. The chorus which is repeated throughout gave us a large indication:

Main Chorus:
And pull back this fail,
Turn night into day,
Don't know you know you're standing in the way of the light,
Pour oil on these flames,
Speed up my heart again,
Don't you know you're standing in the way of the light.

Chorus Change Towards the End of The Song:
Just pull back this fail,
Turn night into day,
Don't you know you're standing in the way of the light,
Pour oil on these flames,
Speed up my heart again,
Don't you know you're standing in the way of the light,
So come on come on come on,
We've been living in the shadows too long,
So come on come on come on.


These lyrics suggest to us that the artist is singing about the pain they are experiencing within the relationship, and the person they love is constantly putting obstacles in the way of their relationship, resulting in her misery. This could be down to her fear/paranoia that he has found another girl.

In our video, our artist (Billie-White) sings about this 'girl' she believes is diverting her boyfriends attention away from her, as the female dancer isn't the same person as the girl who plays Billie-White. Through the dance, we then express an atmosphere which would suggest that Billie-Whites boyfriend is cheating on her, when really, throughout the whole video, this female dancer is a hallucination in Billie-White's head, and is in fact not real.