Narrative

Sven Carlsson - 3 areas of narrative structure 

Sven Carlsson states that music videos fall into two areas. Conceptual clips and performance clips. He claims that binary opposites push the narrative of a video forward.

The performance element can fall under either, song performance, dance performance or instrumental performance. This performer is being made into a commercial exhibitionist who is selling the product to the audience as some fans will aspire to be like them and buy their products and imitate their style.  

The video for My Bloody Valentine - Soon does not conform to this theory fully as it only involves performance elements rather than any conceptual clips. This however is heavily distorted through the way of which it was edited, creating a very disorientating feel to this video reflecting the music itself. This video incorporate elements of song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance but is dominated through shots of guitars due to this instrumental performance being a very important aspect of the music.  

 

The lack of conceptual clips within this video reflects the style of music due to its unconventional nature and its lack of story. This therefore does not fully conform to Sven Carlsson's theory. However, it does conform in the sense that this video feature performance clips in the form of song, dance and instrumental. 

  Tim O'Sullivan - Culture and Society 

Tim's theory states that through careful mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves. Not usually our personal stories, but the stories of us as a culture or set of cultures.

He suggests that narratives have a common structure, starting with the establishment of plot and genre. 
For example, the disorientation and unconventional style of this video could suggest the fighting against the norm in other ways other than music due to fans of this genre generally do not conform to a common or 'normal' society. 
However, due to this videos lack of conceptual clips this theory is much harder to directly relate. Although the distorted effect could relate to the strong stereotypical drug use of fans of this music, and the musicians itself as it almost appears to be a hallucinogenic drug trip while watching the band perform. 

Bordwell and Thompson - Story and plot

This theory states that the quality of a music video is created through the relationship between story and plot. It will consist of three events...

• Inferred events - things that are assumed by the audience
• Explicitly shown events - what is seen within the video
• Non-diegetic material - soundtracks/text on screen etc...

This theory does not relate to the My Bloody Valentine - Soon music video as due being only performance their is no performance to the video therefore inferred events are not directly related due to the lack of story. 

However, there are inferred events in the sense that they will have had to set up their equipment and practice and write the songs. The performance itself is therefore the explicitly shown event which is the video itself. These therefore suggest that this video does conform to Bordwell and Thompsons theory. The music itself would be the non-digetic material as the performance is just a mime of the recorded track that is played over.