We applied several of the narrative theories to our project such as Todorov, Barthes and Levi-Straus. We also used the idea of postmodernism to challenge the normal forms and conventions. We used Todorovs theory of equilibrium in the narrative of our video. The video was fragmented with the narrative, motif and performance al interlinked. Using Todorovs theory we followed the five stages he established but challenged the fourth which was the attempt of restoration of the initial equilibrium, we skipped to stage five where there was a new equilibrium set which we deemed was inevitable for the character in the video, this was where she turned into a masked person herself. The video starts of with a happy equilibrium of a happy relationship and a girl meeting her boyfriend for lunch and then the disruption of this happens which is also where our first example of the breaking things motif comes begins as well. Once the girl find out the boyfriend has cheated this is the 3rd stage of Todorovs theory which is the realization of the disruption.
When doing our research we found that indie videos usually have several layers and usually are about relationships so we followed this convention in our video too. Indie videos can also be fairly abstract which is what we hoped to achieve for ours by use of the animal masks; an example of this would be in the video ‘Dog days are over’ by the indie band ‘Florence and the machine’.
Baudrillard’s, a famous French philosopher spoke about how the media is a form of a hyper-reality and are produced to seem as real as possible, we did this using our own post experiences of relationships to create our video to make it as real as possible.
Our target audience is between the ages of 17 and 25, this age group are renowned for being fairly active in having relationships this is why we picked this topic as one the audience could relate to. Roland Barthes said the audience interpret media with negotiated meaning through using their own experiences of an event to compare it with what’s on screen and understand it more. We had many chances and examples in our video where the audience could relate, for instance the main narrative plot if a relationship break up, the majority of people in this age range would have had some type of experience like this so they would use that experience to interpret the text. Another example of this is where the girl gets approached by the guy on the street, this sort of thing happens with girls of this age often, because they can relate to the character it makes them more interested. A third examples is where the girl gets evicted from her house; during this age group is when most people leave home or have problems at home so have to leave, once again they can relate.
Leotard had a theory that the world is made up of meta-narratives. Irony is a main theme used in postmodernism which used in our video in the way the people in them masks relate to the situation they are presented in, for example the man on the street who approached the girl is perceived by her to be a bit of a pig, so we put him in a pig mask, another example is where the boyfriend cheater on her and so wore a mask of a cheetah. The girl at the end of the video is shown to wear a owl mask, we did this because owls are supposed to be wise animals, so we showed her to have ‘Wised up’ to the other people in the world.
