Applying Media Theories To My Product

Narrative Structure

I can apply Todorov's theory of narrative structure to my music video as I plan for my product to go from equilibrium -> disequilibrium -> new equilibrium. The story of my video introduces a young girl, who wakes up and takes  train out of town. Her spending her day wandering the streets and enjoying herself is the equilibrium, then she finds a newspaper who's headline describes a horrific house fire and death of a family. This is the disequilibrium. She takes the train back, to discover her family home is destroyed, and amongst the flowers is a picture of he and we realise that she is dead. On releasing this, she walks out to the ocean and fades out, showing she has moved on and giving the music video its new equilibrium.
       This use of narrative structure will give my video meaning and relevance, as well as provoking an emotional response from the audience.

Hermeneutic Code

As my character is actually a ghost though out the video, there will be clues, such as other no interaction with other characters, having no reflection in mirrors, and some shots showing her as faded and out of focus. There clues will keep my audience guessing, leading up the the revealing of her true identity, when we see her photograph is pinned to the fence with sympathy flowers.

Structuralism

Relying on my audiences experience, my video will hopefully make an impact. We understand death because we understand what it is to be living, and i a  way I will be blurring this line as we believe she is alive (walking around, reading a book, looking at the sea), yet we find out she is actually dead and can not stay at earth any longer.

Semiotics

When doing semiotics in class we looked at colour and how colour portrays signs to the audience. I am hoping to use colour filters for my shots when I edit them and so I can apply this to my own product. From my research I know that I need to focus my product at a female audience, therefore I hope to use colours that effectively connotate messages to women. After a class discussion we came up with positive connotations for certain colours and these are the ones I hope to use in my own product.

Blue | Cool, depression, cold, loneliness
Brown | Nature, age, life
White | Angelic, heavenly, pure, innocence
Black | Darkness, death, depression
Pink | Femininity, youth, life

When signs, words and actions work together to convey a message to the audience they become codes. I plan to use codes in my own product. Unbeknown to the audience, my character is a ghost through out the video and is very iscolated. I could show the audience she is iscolated by this shot:

The sign - My character on an icolated beach.
The Words - I plan for this shot to go at 0:23 seconds of the song, just as the artist sings the words 'Our minds are torubled by the emptiness'. These lyrics would work with the empty beach to depict the character as being alone and apart from society.
The Action - The next shot on my story board is of the characters feet running, followed by another extreme long shot showing her running from the beach, suggesting she wants to get away from the empiness.

Together, all of these signs work together to create a code, which conveys to my audience that my character is icolated and alone. This is a technical code- something that I, as the creator of the product, can control. However, I must also concider Syntheitc codes that I may convey (codes that I have no control over). These codes rely on cultural context, such as my audiences behaviours, education etc. For example, a member of my audience may not pick up that my character is lonley and running away to gey away from the empty beach, but they may interpret that she is running away from a physical threat, which is not what I want to convey.