Narrative Mock

Exam Mock:
‘Discuss the ways the narrative of one of your productions enhances it’s appeal’


The brief of a2 production was to promote an unsigned band through the production of a music video. The narrative of my music video is a liner narrative which is performance based, integrated with elements of a slapstick comedic narrative. This enticed the audience, developing them as active as it engaged them into two the two-dimensional music video. This is effective as my production was influenced by the genre of ska-punk and skate-punk which are renown for this type of structural narrative. I was inspired by ‘less Than Jake- Does this Lion City Still Roar?’, which focused on intervening the bands performance with a comedic narrative. We utilised this and sot ‘Smaller Than You’ performing, cross faded and edited with a narrative of the band and various skateboarders (other cast-members), relaying drumsticks through Norwich’s urban inner city, to get them back to Jake, the drummer of the band. This was significant to the mise-en-scene as both the performance and the drumstick enhanced and conveyed the bands passion for music.
We were influenced by Todorov’s narrative theory of an equilibrium, a disruption and a new equilibrium, like the narrative of ‘High Planes Drifter’. This developed our music video into 3 equal sections; the first being Jake with his drumsticks at Sound Clash, being the equilibrium; the second the drumsticks being stolen leading to the middle section of the band endeavouring to retrieve them, of the disruption; and the last section of Jake retrieving the drumsticks for ‘Smaller Than You’s gig, being the new equilibrium, ending with closure.
This narrative developed both ska-punk through generic elements, and skate-punk and social realism. Our narrative was extremely similar to the social realist film ‘Fish Tank’, which has a clear linear narrative but on the other hand stands in complete opposition as this British art house film contends with alienation and seclusion in youth in an urban area, whereas ours deals with youth unifying in urban areas to pursue their passion of music and skateboarding, instead of crime. Our comedic based narrative developed skate-punk and ska-punk significantly as we utilised skateboarding into our narrative, dominating the mise -en-scene. This element of the mise-en-scene and narrative amplified the genre as skateboarding and comedy are both featured in the ska-punk underground genre. This is as they are both associated with urban areas, which is why we shot in Norwich’s desolate Anglia Square. Utilising a performance based narrative as well was effective as it allowed the audience to visualise the band, promoting them heavily and continuously in the video. AS the band are unsigned it was fundamental for us to promote them as much as possible for the audience to become familiar with them. Thus we used close-up shots of the bands image, which stated in the Godwin theory, should be apparent.
Other ska bands music video’s such as ‘Sum 41- In Too Deep’ and ‘Catch-22- Point The Blame’ utilise this double based narrative to reference the genre and appeal to the audience. This develops the band passion of music through the performance and signifies their humorous aspect through the comedy. We developed a post-modernist text by integrating skateboarding with slapstick humour, such as the slapstick films of ‘Keystone Kops’ and ‘Lauren and Hardy’, with humour into a ska-punk , which hasn’t been endeavoured before in a music video.
Another element of Goodwin’s theory is that there should be a relationship between the lyrics of the song and the visuals of the media text. The lyrics of ‘Who Knew’ the song we were promoting entailed movement and transition, such as “run away from the light”, “actions have consequences” and “chasing me”, which we symbolised through the use of running, skateboarding and cars. These phrases taken from the song are significant in conveying quick transition, which symbolises the bands message of the transition of becoming an adult. We developed a fast paced edit to carry the motif of transition and movement, and to also fit with the fast ska melodies, renowned in this type of optimistic music.
Our mise-en-scene and narrative with skateboarding, running, fast cats with a fast edit. This was significant in conveying a fast paced narrative, linking with the lyrics and genre. This reference of skateboarding is to entice appeal to make the audience demographic of 15-20, who are primarily males, be interested. This is effective as the genre is also associated with skateboarding, young males and urban scenes, which we utilised into our mise-en-scene. The skateboarding element to our narrative was inspired by Nike SB’s Promotional video- ‘Today Was A Good Day’, which heavily targeted young males who skateboarded in LA.