Narrative means a story that has a beginning middle and end, in moving images (such as music videos) the narrative can either tell the same thing as the lyrics/words or it can tell a completely different story through the moving images. Narratives don’t have to be in chronological order and make sense, they can go back and forth between shots and show flashbacks and flashforward’s.
There are 5 main narrative theorists: Todorov proposed that there was an equilibrium, disruption that then balances to make a new equilibrium. Freytag proposed that you can draw your narrative (almost like a rollercoaster). Propp proposed that each story has a set of stock characters eg the villain and the hero. Levi-Strauss proposed that narratives play out binary opposition. Chatman proposed that everything in a narrative works together so if you take one thing out then the story wouldn’t work / play out the same.
You can use Todorov’s theory to analyse narrative in music videos because the narratives in music videos always have a conflict and a resolution. For example in common’s letter to the free (soundtrack to the 13th about the abolishment of slavery) The black square is a metaphor showing how the black community is trapped in an ideology that is widely believed by the majority of white Americans, at the end of the video the solution is the square being outside and not being trapped in that building any more. Freytag’s theory can be used to analyse Ghost town, for example you can draw where there’s a climax in the piece, eg when you see everyone in the car cramped together.
Another example to use to describe narrative theory is the film Momento, you can use freytag’s theory to analyse this film, you can say that you can draw Momento as a hair pin (present and past), parallel to each other, so the narrative is fragmented switching between the 2 time frames, making a very confusing story for the audience. The film starts with the ending almost like a circular narrative, however, part of the story is behind the hair pin shape not being shown, and the 2 parallels come together at the end showing the connection between the two, leaving the audience to fill in the the gaps and take what they have found out to be the alleged ‘truth’ and make their own ending in their head for what makes sense to them.
To conclude ideas about narrative are useful in analysing music videos because you can see why a video was carried out in a certain way and why it was made how it was made, you can see how they put it together so it follows a story rather than just looking like a lot of shots just pieced together. It’s important for moving image to tell a story and be smooth unless the purpose is to look crazy and out of place to get the audience thinking about why it was done like that.