Roland Barthes Narrative Codes

Roland Barthes theorised that every narrative is interwoven with multiple codes. These 5 codes are:

Enigma - a puzzle
Action - a sequence of events
Semic - connotations
Symbolic - ideologies, defining opposing sources
Cultural - knowledge the audience brings to the text

We chose a music video with a strong narrative (Eminem ft. Dido - Stan) and found examples of these 5 codes within it. This music video has low key lighting as part of its cinematography which we thought our final product would resemble, and we both love the fast pace of the song which is what attracted us to it in the first place.



SYMBOLIC:

Eminem is good, Stan is bad, they look similar on the outside but are opposing forces. Eminem is a victim of obsession/stalking without even knowing it. Eminem is not portrayed as the idealised superstar he usually is, but as an intelligent (wearing glasses), caring person who takes time out of his schedule to reply to his adoring fans.

SEMIC:

Typical conventions of a thriller narrative. Pathetic fallacy is used; the lightning, darkness and rain connote negative emotions. This shot of Stan's reflection is not his true representation, he is deluded and thinks he is seeing an improvement by trying to look like Eminem, however the audience knows he is not succeeding.

ACTION:


The cliche of someone driving at night in the rain is used, which the audience knows never has pleasant consequences, and is often fatal. This motivates the audience to keep watching to find out if the action conforms to the stereotype.

CULTURAL:

(audience brings own references to the code)
athe audience needs to understand who Eminem is and what he is like, in order to understand the transformation that Stan makes due to his obsession. They then too need to understand how a pregnant woman should be treated aposed to how Stan is treating her.
A reference has been made to 'The Shining" when Jack goes insane, similar behaviour as Stan when he too goes mad.

ENIGMA:

(a puzzle in the narritive which is solved after a suspended amount of time)
Enigma here is not for the audience but for the character in the video, in this case Eminem. He is puzzled as to why he heard on the news that someone drove their pregnant girlfriend off a bridge who was carrying a child. He then clicks that it is in fact Stan. Puzzle solved.

Permission to use 'I Need Air'

We sent an email to the music company Columbia Records seeking permission to use the song as part of our coursework. As of yet we have not had a reply and so we will have to assume it is okay to use because it is in a non-comercial manner.

Dear Shirley,

I am an A2 media student currently working on a project where we have to produce a music video which will be assessed by the exam board OCR.
I was given your email address by your colleague who works in your office after getting in contact through the phone this morning.
My group and I would like to use the song ‘I Need Air’ by Magnetic Man for our video and we thought it would be best to contact you for permission to use this regarding copyright issues.
We will be manipulating the video to our own ideas, but the video will only be accessed by the centre and by the exam board OCR. It will be published on a blog as that is the basis of our coursework. The website for the blog is www.blogger.com.
It will also not be used for any commercial purposes, only for us to receive a good mark in our A Levels!

If you would like to contact the centre the address is:
Saffron Walden County High School
Audley End Road
Saffron Walden
Essex
CB11 4UH

Telephone: 01799 513030 and ask to contact Mr Canning or Mr Hansard in the Media Dept.

I hope that you will allow us to use this brilliant song as we feel that we could use it to the best of our ability to produce a piece for us to get great marks at the end. We will send you a copy of our video when it is completed to prove that it is only being used for exam purposes.

Thank you very much for your time, I hope to hear from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Rachel Procter, Maddy Thilly and Sophie Jones

Research and Planning Video Summary

Today we filmed ourselves discussing our progress so far in terms of research and planning.

The Split

After falling far behind our piers our teacher discussed with us what to do about the situation. He advised we split from our group of three and create the project on our own. At first I agreed with him that there was definitely issues with the group losing motivation and absenses, which had certainly had an effect on the project. However now, I do not think splitting the group would be beneficial to us as I think the problems our group had all stemmed from choosing the wrong song to work with 2 months ago, and now suffering the concequences. After the change of song took place a week ago, I felt highly motivated and have just completed 20 pages of intricate storyboarding which will be uploaded shortly.

If the decision of the split is final and we can no longer work as a team, I will undoubtedly have 3 times more work to do. However I think using just my own ideas could be more satisfying than working as a group. We will have to see...

Lyric Annotation

Me and Rachel spent some time meticulously going through the lyrics to check that we wouldn't get stuck for ideas, but the more we went through the lines of the song the more conceptual and artistic our ideas became! I was particularly excited by the potential for eccentric mise-en-scene and beautiful cinematography.

We came up with the concept of having different scenes and crosscutting between them like we see in almost every music video. The main theme of the song is air, so when we start storyboarding we will encorporate that to the highest degree.

I like the fact that although the song falls under the dance/electro genre, it still has an underlying narrative in which we can explore. It focuses on a woman who is being smothered by a man and needs room to be herself, yet still loves the way he makes her feel. This juxtaposition will definitely be echoed in the video.

New Song!

After being inspired by the studio shot video (seen below) we have chosen a new song, one in which all the effects we selected from Rihannah's videos such as the manipulation of time could really work. It is 'I Need Air' by Magnetic Man.

The video it has at the moment I also found inspiring, again because of the speed of the footage. We still want to encompass the lip synchronisation though so we will have to think about that when it comes to filming.

:D www.getaheadocrmedia.blogspot.com

It took watching just one other A2 music video production to solve all our problems. All this time we were for some reason under the impression that the music video had to have a strong narrative structure, which naturally limited our song choice severely by ruling out any songs relying heavily on the beat or bass. However, after being shown this video in class we realised that what we really wanted to do was film mostly studio based, and have a more loose narrative, and a new song would allow us to do that.

Our teacher advised us to practise the 4 section split (which can be seen at 1.03) so that we could refamiliarise ourselves with final cut express from last year.

Lack of Progress

Through the whole of October I feel there has been a lack of momentum with the project; we are (according to our original schedule) several weeks behind our target, and I think I speak for the whole group when I say the song isn't working. The ideas that we have about the mise-en-scene and the inspiration we took from the Rihanna videos were simply much more difficult to apply to the song than had been anticipated...

Meeting Notes

Initial Ideas, Concepts & Inspirations

In order to conceive ideas for the promo video, we needed to deconstruct the lyrics of the song to gain an understanding of the narrative structure.

'You Got The Love' Lyrics

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you
Sometimes I feel like saying "Lord I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need To see me through

Sometimes it seems that the going is just too rough
And things go wrong no matter what I do
Now and then it seems that life is just too much
But you've got the love I need to see me through

When food is gone you are my daily meal
When friends are gone I know my saviour's love is real
Your love is real

You got the love
You got the love
You got the love
You got the love
You got the love
You got the love

Time after time I think "Oh Lord what's the use?"
Time after time I think it's just no good
Sooner or later in life, the things you love you loose

But you got the love I need to see me through

You got the love
You got the love
You got the love
You got the love
You got the love
You got the love

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air
I know I can count on you
Sometimes I feel like saying "Lord I just don't care"
But you've got the love I need to see me through



We concluded that the meaning behind the song is a woman communicating her love for someone, and explaining how he is the one she can turn to when everything in her life goes wrong. Thus, when creating the video for the song, our key themes/concepts should be love and loss.

Ideas


Our first idea (one which was thought up almost simultaneously and instantly by the whole group upon establishing the concepts) was to film most of the sequences in black and white, colour popping red. Using red as an accent colour would undoubtedly connote emotions such as passion and love, but would also keep the cinematography elegant if we were filming in an uncontrollably busy environment. Also, using this technique would give a constant in the video, meaning that it would altogether make the promotional text look more whole.

The second idea we had was to film our video in London, a very romantic city. We have many ideas for shots in London, taking advantage of the sheer mass of people there. One shot in particular that we would be keen to explore would be having a stationary model filmed over a long duration of time while the people were in motion behind her, creating this effect;



After this brainstorm we did some research into other successful promotional music videos. The first one we looked at was the iconic 'Rude Boy' by Rihanna.



At 0minutes 2seconds there is a quick cut forward/reverse shot, achieved in post production which would add a dynamic quality to out video, relatively easily.

At 1minutes 3seconds there are extreme close up shots of lips which have been green-screened and added to a colourful background. We loved this effect as the lips are very sexy and symbolise love in a contemporary manner, and are appropriate in context to our concepts.

At 2minutes 45seconds a repeated, fast zoom in and out is used which we thought created a very successful shot. It could suggest confusion and isolation, which when applied to our song lyrics could work very well.

We also looked into Rihanna's 'Russian Roulette' video. We again took inspiration from a Rihanna video because they always have beautiful cinematography and mise-en-scene, as well as fitting the tempo of the song and using great post-production special effects.



At 0minutes 53seconds a light beam is shone across the set, giving a high contrast and intimidating effect. This could work well in making our model look vulnerable.

Speed is played with meticulously during the video, seamlessly increasing and slowing down. The effect is a very surreal and almost dream-like outcome which compliments the tempo of the music.

Some shots are filmed through glass which, in semiotic terms, is not giving the audience a true representation of the actress. Also in some instances she breaks the fourth wall, and with her eye contact the audience feels more emotionally connected to her. Because our song is very emotive, eye contact with the camera could be a good way to evoke empathy from the audience when exploring our concept of 'loss'.

A post-production which has been used repeatedly in this promo video is the cross fading transition. This works particularly when connoting flash backs and also connected two characters which are in different locations.

At 2minutes 22seconds an extremely shallow focus is used to separate two characters. This would create a really professional look to our piece however the cameras we will be using to film our video would not give us the option of adjusting the aperture.

.....

We also toyed with the idea of using stop motion in sections of our video, as we loved how inventive original it could allow us to be as illustrated in the video below. However we had to rule out this idea because of the sheer time it would take to create such an elaborate stop motion video.

Meeting Notes

After a while of debating which song would work best for a music video, we chose The XX remix of You Got The Love by Florence and The Machine. We chose this song as we felt it encompassed all the elements needed to create an interesting promotional text, including a mixture of fast and slow tempo, a narrative structure, strong lyrics with the potential to use lip synchronisation and, most importantly, a song which we would not get totally sick of listening to!

10 Week Schedule

A2 Music Video Project

For our A2 coursework we have chosen to produce a promotional pack for the release of a new album, including a music promo video, a CD cover, and a magazine advertisement. This will form the bulk of the coursework, as well as an ancillary task and evaluation. We have created a schedule for the following 10 weeks to help us with time management, however we can't plan the last 4 weeks of the schedule as we do not know how far we will have come at that stage.