Stuart Hall's Reception Theory

Todorov and Levi Strauss styled clips

Progress of planning towards filming

Progress of Planning:

At this moment in time some of our initial ideas have changed and have been modified to attract more audiences. Our plan to have a 'spectacle' genre music video has now changed to a performance and concept music video. We have done this as we would like to focus more on a performance, with our music video based around a band, i would like to include some aspects of spectacle still. This is because it can attract a wider audience, as they are more likely to view our music video numerous of times to decode the storyline better. 

We have planned to try and steer away from doing a narrative music video, this is because audiences are less likely to view the video more than once because they will follow the storyline first time and therefore will not need to view it again to gain understanding. 

Mis-en-Scene wise our main prop will be a electric guitar in which the main artist will be seen with throughout our music video, as well as additional music instruments such as drums and base guitars for the band to use. In using these we will give emphasis on the importance of the music and create a performance setting. Moreover our main artist will be dressed in rock-style clothing such as a black top, checkered shirt, black ripped jeans and converse trainers, to give her a edgy look. To compliment this we will have a big hair style and may also add a colourful highlight to the artists hair to show a out going character and as seen in rock artists music videos like Avril Lavigne.

For our locations our ideas are now centred around a rebel looking girl walking out of her house followed by a smart nerdy looking girl, showing Binary opposites within the first scene. As they walk out there will be a pan upwards, starting with the contrast of shoes slowly following with the contrast between characters clothing. We plan to as this shot pans up, have flash backs overlapping the split screen so that the rebel character is shown with flashbacks of her and a boy arguing and a adult which could be a parent or work boss. In addition the smart looking character will have nice scenes flashing back of her getting praised, showing lifestyle binary opposites also as they head out the house for another day. In which they both state "Here we go again". We initially thought that the characters could be entering the school gates and the rebel character would be kicked out of school, rebelling against it by creating a band. However we want to avoid using a school location as it limits our target audiences to a specific age range (teenage), so want to use a more universal location such as a work job at the moment. 

Levi Strauss's theory of Binary Opposites is the theory our music video will focus most on. This is goof because it has a meaning and more people will want to listen and watch the video because it's interesting. We have decided not to use Todorov's three stages of narrative theory, including the Equilibrium, Disruption and Resolution. We decided this method did not suit our lyrics of the music after practise storyboarding as they have angry connotations from the start and therefore we could not use the first stage as an equilibrium, especially when we would like our music video to be fasted paced from the offset. 

Todorov's Three Stage Theory - storyboard

We tried to storyboard what our music video may look like if we followed Todorov's theory where in the beginning of the video's narrative there is equilibrium, followed by a disruption but finishes with 'a happy ever after'! However after experimenting with this theorist, we have decided that the 3 stages will not suit our genre of music (which as rock, is very heavy and without equilibrium)!

Hall's Reception Theory

Stuart Hall suggested that when an audience member looks at a media product such as a music video, they are able to interpret the literary message which is encoded within the product.

Encoding/ Decoding Model of Communication