When it came to choosing who we wanted to act
in our video, we decided to keep the actors in our group as we thought this
would be easier as we knew, as a group, what we wanted to achieve, so instead
of having to relay our ideas to other people who may not understand the kind of
things we wanted do with our video, we decided to use myself and Cody for the
main actors for our video.
In a similar sense, we decided not to ask
people to be extras for our video as all the locations we are using are city
centre locations that are always highly populated with people which works well
with the distorting concept of our video.
We chose to cast people of our age in the
video is essentially about two teenagers, ones who is fixated on the thought of
being in love with a certain girl, who may be a figure of his imagination.
MALE
CHARACTER
Our male character is a seemingly
secretive and closed off person. Cody can easily achieve this, with his costume;
it’s extremely easy to create the representations we wanted.
Cody isn’t a drama student which we thought,
for both characters, could cause issues, but we realised our roles are simple
enough that it will be easy to create the images we wanted to, regardless of
whether we are drama students.
FEMALE
CHARACTER
I am taking the role of the female character.
This is a fairly simple role, and as I'm not a drama student, it is easy for me
to carry out.
Our female character is a very illusive and,
in a sense, mysterious character in that we, as the audience don't know if she actually
exists. Although, I’m 17 and Cody is 18, we felt this would fit perfectly with what we were trying to achieve with our portrayal of our characters, as like many teenagers, we are showing them to be extremely closed off and secretive people who are extremely susceptible to ‘love’ even when it doesn’t really exist.
My video is a love story. I features 2 characters one of which is more fixated in their relationship that the other. This video follows their relationship struggles as it shows the boy being fixated on the girl. He follows her through several city locations in an effort to find her and remove her mask.
HOW ARE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES EMPLOYED IN THE 1975'S 'A CHANGE OF HEART'
'A Change Of Heart' was released on the 21st of April 2016 by The 1975 on their second album entitled 'I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware Of It.' With over 6 million views online, it is one of the most popular and successful songs from the second album.
The 1975 are an English 'rock' band originating from Wilmslow, Cheshire. They have been together since 2002 until they were signed by Dirty Hit records in 2012. Since then they have released multiple EP's and 2 UK chart and US billboard topping albums and have headlined multiple successful festivals like Reading in the UK and Cochella in the US. The song 'A change of heart' falls under the genres of indie rock. As a band as a whole they're considered as a rock band but some of their songs are much less mainstream, adding the indie element.
Videos with a strong narrative are extremely popular when it comes to The 1975. They have released Robbers, which is arguably their most popular song, The Sound, Settle Down and Chocolate which all have videos of a similar style.
A Change Of Heart can be said to closely relate to Robbers in the sense that they have used many similar narrative ideas in both videos.
The video for A Change Of Heart is less of a generic rock video. It contains a performance but not in typical sense. This video see's front man Matty Healy performing in a mine like fashion. He appears to be dancing instead of generically performing as you would expect in a rock video.
Healy references Michel Jackson as Charlie Chaplin and 'Felini's - The Clown' in published notes regarding the planning of the video. He talks about using the face paint of a clown to give his character one simple, constant emotion.
Perhaps his strongest references are to Gene Kelly and Bob Fosse, both widely recognised for dancing, Kelly in 'Singing in the rain.' He took this well rounded idea and created part of a persona surrounding this but in less 'smooth' and less 'confident' way.
Perhaps the most dominant reference is to another of the bands most popular videos, 'Robbers.' Healy states in his notes that he wants to make intertexual references to the video and does so in a particularly obvious way. Many of the shots are identical if not slightly altered to show the same thing in a different 'light.'
For example, both videos show distinct shots of guns being used in a light hearted manner.
The video for A change of heart
can be linked to the ideas of Tzvetan Todorov and his theory of narrative
structures in the sense that he talks about the idea of equilibrium, disruption,
recognition, repair and equilibrium.
In
the video it's clear to see, in the narrative style beginning, it is almost as
though there is an equilibrium and everything is settled. This could be
challenged by the character’s
body language as it does not imply there is an equilibrium. As soon as we see
the two clown like characters together, the first disruption comes to light.
This is where we see the use of the gun in a threatening way from one of the
characters to the other. As the narrative of the video unfolds, we see the
first recognition of the disruption. The female character withdraws from the
male and begins to seem irritated and fed up. As the video continues, it is
obvious that it fits with Todorov's ideas as we then see that an attempt is
made to repair the damage made by the disruption, where the male character attempts
to ‘win
over’
the female character to encourage a newly found equilibrium. Towards the end of
the video, it is clear a new equilibrium is reached as the two characters
become closer together and it's almost as if they go back to exactly they were
before there was disruption. This links with Todorov’s idea of circular
narratives as the video seems to end in the same state in which it began,
almost following a cycle.
This video shows, in a sense, a circular narrative. It starts with the characters dancing romantically and closely, there is turmoil in the middle which is then resurrected and the characters go back into a similar position to how they were before.
Having
a story like this makes the video much more engaging for the audience.
In
a sense, this video can be easily applied with Andrew Goodwin's theories of
music videos. Goodwin states that there can be a connection between lyrics and
visuals. As much as this isn't entirely a performance video, there are still
some subtle links which help to amplify the video. For example, when we see a disequilibrium
between the characters and we see the female character turn her back on the
male, this could be seen as having ‘a
change of heart.’ This
idea is repeated when the video reaches the equilibrium and we see the couple
refer back to how they were earlier on in the video, again reinforcing the idea
of having a change of heart.
In
a similar sense, Goodwin says there is a link between the visuals and the
music. In that sense, there are strong links. For example, the chorus repeated
the line 'I just had a change of heart.' When these lyrics are sung, things in
the video seem to happen, like the use of the gun, that may cause someone to
have a change of heart.
Goodwin
also talks about the way close-ups and certain shots that can create a motif.
As Matt Healy is the front man of The 1975, his appearance is already as type
of motif as it is. By focusing on only him in the video, it makes him a selling
point for the band and creates a motif in the sense that in all of their videos
he either play a main character or is the main focus of a more 'band' style
video. In a more literal sense, many of the shots used of both character’s faces create a
motif as although they are wearing face paint, they are focussed on in a way
that creates a motif as we see similar facial expressions throughout the video.
Barthes discusses the
way that a media text can be like a tangled ball of string that need to be
separated in order to see the different threads. this applies to media texts in
the sense that we need to unravel a text to encounter a plurality of potential
meanings. This means you can look at a text in one way and understand one
meaning of the text, look at the texts from another angle and find another
meaning which can be done again and again, essentially pulling out the
metaphorical string and revealing the different threads. He decided that these
strings were called narrative codes that could be categorised in 5 ways, 2 of
which are very important for music videos.
1- An enigma, potentially
making you ask why something happened. This allows the audience to enjoy the story
line and make their own assumptions about the storyline which can be
manipulated by plot twists.
2- The action, for example,
if someone is put into an ambulance, we assume they’re going to hospital. This means
the audience is inferring the details this allows for the removal of ‘boring’
details.
These can be applied
to the video for A Change of Heart as at the beginning we are forced to ask why
the male character is in a clown costume and why he enters the room looking so
depressed. We also question the background sounds for example when we hear a
laugh track when he looks in the mirror, this can leave the audience
questioning. This allows the audience to make assumptions on what the character
is in the costume and how they think the video will look.
When we see the
couple dancing, we assume they are in a relationship, or at least want to be,
there is no need for us to see the life story of these characters to understand
that. We also don’t need details like why they are dancing together or at a
fair ground, we just assume they are there for a reason.
Levi-Strauss talked
about the theory of binary opposites and subordinate groups. This is
essentially applying representations on binary opposites to make sure dominant
culture is maintained and subordinate groups and representations are
marginalised. This could be lightly applied to this music video as we see the
male character take the lead in all elements of the video itself, for example,
in the dancing scenes it seems as though he takes the lead role. Similarly, if
the two characters reach a personal disequilibrium, it is blamed on the male
character and the female takes a generic reaction of turning her back to him,
thus reinforcing binary opposites.
As a video, A change of heart fits many conventions of the genre of rock. In a similar sense, it doesn't. For example, it doesn't have a generic performance element. Rock videos generically feature at least the main singer in the video which is true with this. Similarly, rock videos tend to have a story or meaning to them. in A change of heart, we see the story follows a relationship which creates meaning. The song has a strong instrumental section which is another element of rock videos.
The 1975 as a band tend to stick to particular colour schemes as whole, they either tend to use blacks, whites and greys or on the complete opposite end of the scale, use pink and white.
In terms of costume, again, as a band, they use similar costumes throughout their videos and performances which again creates a motif. They tend to stick to dark colours which fit well with the use of a both of their colour schemes.
