Telling Not Telling

A reflection on Week 1’s reading

It was a pleasant surprise to discover many similarities of this week’s reading with my past courses in cinema studies. Just having recently completed a “Popular Cinema” course, I recognized a few names like Bordwell and Thompson and understood the discussion on the “criteria” of narrative structure. Looking at the music video for Aerosmith’s “Crazy”, I definitely agree with the Varnallis’ (author of the reading?) analysis that “Crazy” only presents what appears to be a narrative rather than delivering one. In that case, music videos like “Crazy” remind me more of the experimental genre of film and also the style of European Art Cinema. Characteristics including lack of a driving narrative, dialogue, etc. where the audience of the films, or in this case, the music videos, are given the freedom to have their own interpretations of the story and meaning.

Due to the short timed nature of music videos, they lack the chance to explore settings, the past, present and future, protagonists and antagonists, etc., however, I believe that a good music video director utilizes an audiences’ preconception of narrative structure to create these “faux” narratives that exist in 4-5 minute music videos.

Looking at Ed Sheeran’s “Give Me Love” music video, the opening presents a few shots that establish a loose storyline for the audience to make sense of. There’s the angel with an arrow in her chest, a lingering tracking shot of a handsome policeman and then a cut to the same angel but this time alive, hence suggesting that the music video will reveal how she ended up dead with the arrow in her chest. Similiar to “Crazy”, there is no spoken dialogue between the characters and each shot are like broken fragments like memories of the past.

The awesome thing about music videos and their experimental art nature is that they pay more attention to creating compositionally strong images, much like photographs. That’s not to say that feature films don’t do so either, but from what I’ve seen, where music videos lack in narrative, they make up for artistically.