The Carol Vernallis Theory - Narrative (Part 1/4)

In the last few days we have been analysing theories of Music Videos. One of the theories I am going to cover is the Carol Vernallis Theory.

I read part of Carol's research which was titled -
The Kindest Cut - Functions and meanings of Music Video Editing.

Carol Vernallis's theory revolve's around four different and important concepts.I am going to break them down. They are:

1. Narrative
2. Diegsis
3. Camera Movement and Framing
4. Editing (I will be submitting a detailed post about this)

I am going to analyse each of these concepts and I will establish what they mean, and how they can benefit my music video since this is research for it.

1) Narrative

• A music video is a visual response to the song and lyrics, not the other way around. The video should be support the lyrics meanings and song, but the artist/star will remain dominant, this is to appeal to an audience.
• There does not need to be a  balance between narrative and performance. A song can have a full video of narrative, or full of performance or a mixture. Most of the time performance takes prominence in order to to show of the star and song more

• A example of a music video that is purely performance is Martin Garrix - Wizard

The video is 95% percent performance, its only real focus throughout the whole video is Martin Garrix and him entertaining his crowd. This is just one example of how a video can be focused on performance rather than narrative, I may use this theme in my own music video. This video is the same it focuses on performance but it has a narrative with it and this gives me more ideas for my own music video.

This video is Fall out boy - Dance Dance

• Carol Vernallis says that there at the end of the music video it may not give a real ending or clear closure for the audience. The narrative is not always finished, It can be a fragment, the story does not have to be finished

• The narrative may appear disjointed - There is no need for continuity in a music video, this would make the audience focus on the video, not the song, trying to follow the story. If the video is jumping from performance to scene repeatedly, the focus remains on the stars and song since it makes the audience aware of the artists.

• Something still needs to drive the video forward, however, it's usually not the narrative, this may cause the video to ask questions it doesn't actually answer, it leaves the audience guessing, and wanting more from the artist.

• There many indeed by a narrative theme running through the video, but usually in a montage theme, throwing it together since continuity is not needed for a music video.