Filming: Narrative 1

We shot the narrative shots for the majority of the video in one day. Here, we dabbled in set design to make Jack’s living room seem more like a bachelor’s pad where he had passed out, as well as did our first bit of outdoor filming down his street. As discovered in previous filming expeditions, cars on a street have to be heavily censored for personal safety issues and thus we were careful not to film and registration plates or cars with people in them when outside as this would mean we would have to blur out the number plates which, although showing off our skills, would also make the shots look bad and poorly planned. Thus we were very aware of this during filming.

The Narrative shots in doors were shot with no script as we knew there would be no sound in the video. This proved interesting as we got genuine emotion and some interesting arguments.

The narrative in our video conforms to Todorov's Equilibrium Theory of Narrative as the shown plot features Jack sleeping (Original Equilibrium) and is then rudely awaken by his friend (Sonia) who then starts a fight (Disequilibrium). The two fight and then ignore each other (Acknowledgement) until Jack apologises with a peace offering of ice cream and a film (attempt to repair the situation) whic leads finally to Sonia accepting this offering and them singing and laughing together (NEW Equilibrium), restoring their relationship.

However, within this, the background story also follows Todorov's theory. Taken into context of the character's lives, we come in the Attempt to Repair stage of these character's life, presuming that they once had a good friendship which would lead to Sonia caring about Jack's habits (Equilibrium), then jack got into drinking and drugs - shown through the initial scenes with close ups of beer bottles and packets of drugs - which Sonia didn't like as Jack changed and was threatening the equilibrium of the friendship and his life (Disequilibrium). Sonia must have acknowledged the situatoin before because it seems that this in the not the first time this has happened - through his reaction to her shouting, again, and also through Sonia's reaction to the situation. The dialougue in the Cut Scene also reinforces this idea. The video then comes in to witness the last two stages of Todorov's theory when the two fight and brood then Jack apologises (Attempt to Repair) and they solidify their friendship again (NEW Equilibrium). However, our narrative is slightly naive as it doesn't address whether or not Jack's character gives up the drugs and the drink. However, looking at the construct of narrative's within videos, especially of this genre, they do not have to be this detailed and thus we didn't feel the need to address this fully, but instead included the shot of the two friends singing and laughing together in Jack's living room in which there once was drugs and alcohol etc, but now is clean. This happy ending should please audiences as a music video is not there to leave a sense of impending doom, nor to depress, and the story line fits into the style of the music; happy and carefree and thus demanding a happy ending.