How can Artic Monkey's 'A view from the afternoon' be understood through the concept of Todorov's narrative theory?

How can Artic Monkey’s ‘A view from the afternoon’ be understood through the concept of Todorov’s narrative theory?

Torodov’s theory of narrative follows a very simple concept. This concept is that music videos are split up into 3 acts with 5 different points. The first point is the equilibrium which starts act 1, this sets up and introduces the story to the audience e.g. getting off a school bus or waking up in the morning. The second factor is the problem, this is the point in the song in which the story takes a turn and things start to go bad, or difficult such as a bully incident, or something getting lost, this then sets up act 2. Torodov says there is then a point in which this all changes and goes back to normal, the resolution, this would be the main character standing up to the bully or finding whatever they thought was lost. Act 3 is then a series of shots which show how the rest of the story plays out after this resolution.

In ‘A view from the afternoon’ however doesn’t follow these simple steps so straightforwardly. At the beginning of the video there is a short clip of the main character setting up his drum kit with no music playing. Instead of this being the equilibrium, I it is more of a prologue to the story as there is no music playing and it doesn’t really establish what is going on. An enigma symbol is introduced in the prologue with the shot of the glitter spraying in the main characters face. A proairetic symbol instigates act 1 as soon as the Drummer (main character) starts playing his drum and the song starts playing with all the instruments of band being introduced. Act 1 then continues with the main character drumming away with a few shots of the scenery and of a man with a baseball bat. This act then comes to an end when three men appear in front of the drummer with intensions of messing around with him, they throw chips, stare at him all while he plays, and this is the start of the problem. This introduces us to act 2, within this act we see the drummer getting more tired and distressed as he plays, after a few slow motion shots and the shots that switch to day and night, a young girl walks passed him holding a glass of milk, she represents the resolution. The girl approaches the drummer and feed him milk while he plays, this causes the story to flow into a short interlude while the music stops. This interlude shows the drummer cleansing himself in a bath, which is a metaphor for relaxation and restoration of normality and good, this is shown to be not real as the bath shot is in colour whereas the rest of the music video is in black & white.

The next shot is of the drummer’s hand slowly opening to find that they are covered in blood. Act three however starts as soon as he continues to play the drums this expresses to the audience that although his hands are bleeding, it is a good thing as it urges him on to continue the song. The music and story go hand in hand in this music video as they complement each other, certain actions within the narrative create a change in the song and instruments. This helps define each act and points in the music video which are important. Act 3 is fairly short as it just a night time scene of the man with the baseball bat approaching the drummer. This song compliments this scene as the song is drawing to a climax as when as the narrative, this makes it all more effective to the audience. The drummer stops playing before the man hits him and then the narrative is returned to the enigma shot we see in the prologue of the drummer getting glitter sprayed on him, this makes a link to the beginning and end of the story which performs a circular structure to the narrative.

Inspiration For Concept

We were able to get inspiration from many different sources for our concept because it is quite common in music videos. The idea of a relationship in struggle is something that we could easily access from anywhere in the media, this meant that we had to work harder to try and make our video unique and not like the ones everyone else sees.
For our inspiration we looked at existing music videos as well as other sources of media like film to give us an understanding of techniques and storylines that we could use. our first source we looked at the student music video made by Joe Murray Firehorse - 'Bloodstream'.









This music video follows very similar story lines as ours, except its basically in reverse. this video uses some really nice techniques to show that one another like each other without any text or facial expressions (tucking hair behind the ear), which I believe could work really well in our video. Also the story goes from a couple falling un love to arguing and eventually breaking up, ours starts with the break up and then the couple get back together in the end.






Strangers on a train











The film 'Strangers on a train' was our next source of inspiration as it uses quite a  technique that we would find useful in our video. In the opening scene of the film, the camera films two different guys walking towards a destination but we only see their feet, what's different about this scene is that one guy is only filmed walking in one directions (left) and the other is film only walking in the other (right). This gives the audience the idea that they are going to arrive and meet each other at the same destination. This could really work in our video as the two characters in our concept are too going to find each other at the beach (our final destination) and by using this technique we can give the audience the same idea that 'strangers on a train' tried to get across. this technique also creates an enigma for the audience as they wanting to know where the characters are going and where they will arrive.

Narrative timeline

For further planning we decided to create a timeline of the duration of our chosen song 'Kings'. upon this timeline we were planning each stage and scene that we're going to film and matching with the timing of the music. This way we have a much easier job sorting out which shots are when and matching the film with the music.

Doing this timeline now allows us to much easily create detailed storyboards for each scene of the music video. It also means that we can now start to plan each shot and even start shooting draft shots of our music video, to see what we need to improve or change and what we can keep the same.

Basic Concept For our Music Video



Concept

After analysing the lyrics of the song we have chosen, we came to understand that the artist (Samuel Ford) was talking about a an incident within a relationship to which the female had maybe cheated or betrayed her partner in some way. Therefore the lyrics then talk about how he forgives the female for what she has done and although it has effected the partner he believe they can become a strong couple again.

With this information we started to gather a few ideas about the different types of locations, costumes and the basic plot of what was going to happen. We decided the basic idea was going to be a montage of shots between two people in a broken relationship reminiscing over the times that they had in their relationship before they split up. Both characters will be filmed taking a journey somewhere and stopping at different location along the way, the camera will cut between the male and the female travelling throughout the video. We will keep on cut to a cork board which would have multiple photos of the couple at different points in their relationship, such as, their first date and their first time at the beach, when each person is at the location that these moment happen, it will switch to the photo on the board. The shots would be jumping between the two people travelling all in one direction (i.e. the male will be filmed going only left and the female will be filmed only going in the right direction), this creates the idea that they are going to meet somewhere (foreshadowing what actually happens) in the same location, not knowing the other is going there. Finally they meet at the last location and seeing each other reminds them how much they mean to one another, making them rekindle their relationship.

Locations:

The type of locations that we planed on shooting at we places like a beach, a forest, a café, the boy's and girl's bedroom and Marriot's way (bridleway), each of these locations would have a significant meaning to each other.

Costumes:

Costumes aren't really a integral focus of our music video as I feel it would be best if the characters just wore casual generic clothes that teenagers would wear. This is just because our music video is about two teenagers sorting out their relationship and if we were to alter the costumes to anything slightly abnormal it would create a new enigma for the audience and take away the focus from the story we are trying to convey.

Annotated Lyrics For Chosen Song