Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp born 17th of April 1895 was a Russian scholar, critic and literary analyst.

In 1969 after researching over 100 folk tales and analysing them  he used the information to create his own character theory along with other theorist like Ervin Goffman, John Campbell and Gorden Fletcher.

His theory states that there are 7 main character types in folk tale narrative structures and they are the following.

1. The Villain- Otherwise known as the antagonist in the narrative and is contrary to the hero
2. The Hero- Otherwise know as the protagonist and is contrary to the villain.
3. The Donor- Plays a supporting roll in the narrative.
4. The Dispatcher- That sends the hero on his way.
5. The false hero- Pretending to be the hero.
6. The Helper- Helps the hero, in comparison to a supporting role.
7. The Princess- The reward for the hero.
8. Her Father- of the the obstacle preventing the hero from the princess.

These are the 7 broad character types he found and in relation to a music video, I have found 'Love Story' by Taylor Swift in which she is the princess in need of rescuing he is the prince and the hero who will save her and is a mixture of illustration and amplification. The is a dual character in the video as the villain and her father are play by the same character and his aim is to keep the prince away from the princess.

Propp's theory went further to classify narrative functions into four stages or as he calls them 'spheres'.

1. Preparation- The '1st sphere', or the premise of the narrative in seven parts;

• A member of the family leaves home. 
• A prohibition or rule is imposed on the hero. 
• The prohibition or rule is broken. 
• The villain makes and attempt at reconnaissance. 
• The villain learns something about his victim. 
• The villain tried to deceive the victim to get possession of his/her belongings. 
• The victim unknowingly helps the villain by being deceived or influenced by the villain

     2. Complication- The '2nd sphere', otherwise know as the plot leading to the climax. This sphere unlike the first only has four parts;

• The villain harms a member of the family. 
• A member of the family lacks or desires something. 
• This lack or misfortune is made known; the hero is given a request or a command and he goes on a mission or quest. 
• The seeker (often the hero) plans action against the villain

     3. Transference- The supporting characters in the narrative.

• The hero leaves home. 
• The hero is tested, attached, interrogated and, as a result, receives either a magical agent or a helper. 
• The Hero reacts to the actions of the future donor. 
• The hero uses the magical agent. 
• The hero is transferred to the general location of the object of his mission or quest

     4. Struggle- The demise of the story the part of the narrative where we can see the hero in trouble but he returns to save the day, also the fourth and final sphere.

Looking through Propp's theory and seeing the detail put into it I can really appreciate his character typing and I think that in order to make a good overall music video I will have to make sure that the narrative in which my group and I create is is well thought through and structured around some of Propp's theories.

story board

Group 16's Story Board

lyrics

Group 16'S Song Choice Lyrics

To help the group and Keith in particular, we have found the lyrics for our chosen song "Fix You" by "Coldplay" from a website.

When you try your best but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can’t replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

And high up above or down below
When you’re too in love to let it go
But if you never try you’ll never know
Just what you’re worth

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Tears stream down on your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down on your face
And i…
Tears stream down on your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down on your face
And i…

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Audience

By using Wordle I have created a bunch of words to form what the target audience of our music video would formulate from their kind of personality and background.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp was born in 1895 and died in 1970 (aged 75), he was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar who analysed the basic plot components of Russian Folk Tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. There are 31 functions in the narrative structure of a tale according to Vladimir that can be placed into the structure of a story. There are four elements to a story, first, the introduction, second, the the body of the story, third, the donor sequence, fourth, and finally the hero's return.

A music video that I believe follows the theory of Vladimir is "The Hoosiers, Goodbye Mr A", because the video is mainly about hero's and a villain with the four main elements involved. The beginning of the video starts off with a little cartoon sketch in the style of a comic strip identifying the characters and what they are to do with in the song (The introduction), (The body of the story) is shown with the band in a secret HQ underground with the fake hero tied up over what looks like acid and the band saying "Your number is up" and pushing a button, which lowers Mr A towards the acid, next (The donor sequence) is shown first by the papers reading "Who will save the world now?" and the band becoming the hero's by putting the heroic costume from the comic strip on and showing plans of destroying the villain by sending Mr A into space on a rocket, saving a cat from a tree, stopping robbers, being given the key to the city and finally sending Mr A into space tied to a rocket. (The hero's return) is shown by the band in their costume on the front of the Times magazine being regarded as the greatest superheros of our time and by singing off Mr A while he goes into space.

To see the video please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjyxIEtARPQ&ob=av2n

our pitch

animatic

Group 16's Anamatic

Click play on the video below and watch our anamtic planning of our video to get a feel of whats to come... Enjoy ;)

 

 

mood board

Group 16's Mood Board !

Our Coldplay mood board gives everyone a feel as to what kind of instruments, characters, locations, influences and styles may be included in our video. Take a look!

Final song choice

We narrowed down our list and chose one song. We had in mind that we are obviously going to be making a low budget video so we chose a genre that we knew we would replicate easily which was indie rock. We have chosen to make a video for the song fix you by Coldplay.  Why? Well we all agreed that it was a very cool song and we wouldn't get sick of hearing it and we felt that we could make a video that could really add more meaning to the song without contradicting it.

How will our video differ from the main video?

So far we haven't completed our story board but we have talked about what our video is going to be like. Our video is very different to the original video, it is going to tell a story of two different lives, a man who has just maybe lost his job and is about to give up and a young lady who has falling pregnant and doesn't want her baby the artist plays the role of being a saviour, sort of a god. The artist also plays the role of being the observer as well as the narrator. We have also talked about the wardrobe for the artist. The artist is going to start off looking scruffy and dressed all in black and as things progress and get better in the end he will be dressed all in white. This is just a rough outline of what we have talked about so far but it is not definite yet because we might just end up tweaking a few things. Finally for the edit we have thought of a mix of fast pace at the end and slow pace at the beginning.  We have also thought of filming parts of the video with a hand held camera just to create the shaky effect.  

Here is a link of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skUJ-B6oVDQ&ob=av2e

Short list of potential Songs

Here is a short list of potential songs and genres myself and my group put together
                                                                        - Indie/rock

- Soul

- Pop

 

- Soul to Soul

- Coldplay

- James Blunt

- Tom Jones

- The Verve

- James Brown

- James Blunt: Three wise men

- James Blunt: Goodbye my lover

- Coldplay: Fix you

- Coldplay: Yellow

- The Verve: Bittersweet symphony

Final Song Choice

Coldplay "Fix You"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34KF_UzrwAY&p=4E8E9A50A58A3CD3&playnext=1&index=23

We have chosen Coldplay's Fix You because, the videos structure is very simple and easy to make a video that is original to with clear lyrics that are easy to remember and duplicate in the video. Our music video will differ from this video by having a story involved with a boy being depressed and a girl being depressed then finally being brought together by the narrator of the song (me) at the end of the song.

This is only a brief outline of what me and my group plan on doing for the video.

Short List of Potential Songs

Potential songs

My group and I have decided on not doing a typical genres for our song such as R&B, hip hop, rap or pop because, we don't have a budget to re-create a good video for one of these genres which would feature big houses, flash cars and many women and we also don't want to do one of these genres, because we want to be original and unique, not just typical.

 

We brainstormed ideas for different types of genres and artists/bands and we narrowed it down to the following:

- Indie/rock

- Soul

- Pop

 

- Soul to Soul

- Coldplay

- James Blunt

- Tom Jones

- The Verve

- James Brown

- James Blunt: Three wise men

- James Blunt: Goodbye my lover

- Coldplay: Fix you

- Coldplay: Yellow

- The Verve: Bittersweet symphony

Review of Previous Students Video

Imran, Lani, Marika & Sophie from 283goswell on Vimeo.

This groups video is a very good example of having a well researched, planned and produced music video. The video is to me is in between illustration and disjuncture, because the video is of the girls mainly out on the street and inside of a room which is not what the lyrics are about but they do have some examples of the lyrics with the squeezing of someones bum relating to the lyrics. The video has the girls narrating the story one by one and all together for the chorus which is a very good example of narrating also they have a variety of different shots so that the viewer keeps an interest.

There is no real story involved in the video rather than the group singing the lyrics to the audience and showing some examples of what the lyrics mean in the video. the camera has a close up of someone who has icing on their lips whilst singing to the song which can mean that the group want to show the typical sweetness of a pop video.

The video shows a lot of different shot types and angles which give the video a meaning and helps the audience to relate to the song while helping to create the illustrative and disjuncture effect to the video.

The editing of the video is well thought of, because it is slow and fast in some places which is typical of some pop videos also the video goes back and forward in time near the end making the video unique to others and gives an exellent feel to the video.

 

 The genre of the groups song is clearly pop. I can see that it is pop not just from the song itself but how the characters are dressed and what the video looks like as a whole.