Case Study: Narrative Theory

By Lucy Grubb

Introduction

• Royal Blood are a hard rock band from Brighton, England. Their song 'Figure it Out' was first released on August 18th 2014, appearing on the band's fourth single and third track on their self titled album.

Barthes' Codes - Open and Closed Texts

• This video uses both open and closed texts, emphasised through the use of two tone colouring to create alternate interpretations. The video opens with the red overlay, and the text is open for the audience to create their own meaning about what is happening in the scene.

• However, when the overlay turns blue, the text becomes closed and the meaning begins to become more explicit. As the narrative progresses, the audience's perspective on the video is challenged as the woman is not the only criminal. This is shown through the flashback of the woman escaping from the van after the present narrative of the woman stabbing the male who captured her.

Open and Closed Texts

Flashbacks• The purpose of the flashback is to recount the female's events

of being captured before the sequence of events started in order to fill in the missing gap of the story, either supporting or challenging the audience's perspective of the story.

• This type of flashback is called an external analepsis, which is a flashback before the narrative started. This flashback is supported by fast paced, choppy shots of the woman inside the van, to create a sense of urgency and panic.

Continuity Editing

• The video establishes a logical coherence between shots through the use of continuity editing even though the video is supposed to create confusion. The audience can see through the use of two tone colour that there are two sides to the conflict, reality and what the woman sees.

Goodwin’s Theory

• The music video creates a strong sense of storytelling through frequent use of match on action, in which one shot cuts into the other portraying action from the first shot. The music video amplifies the lyrics through the theme of "trying to figure it out". As the video progresses, the audience has to work out the real story of events for themselves, "figuring out" the plotline with help of the flashback. The video develops the simplistic lyrics, taking the idea of "nothing here to see" and changing the colour of the scene, in order to portray the alternate side of the story.

Claude Levis Strauss Theory

• “Constant creation of conflict/opposition drives narrative"• flashback vs real time• visual contrast between red tone (open text) and blue

tone (explicit) to create contrast between illusion and reality

• constant opposition between woman walking slowly and fast paced fight scenes to intensify the action and suspense

• conflict between what we see as love (2:19) and hate (2:22)