To Narrate or Not to Narrate?

[rubyeye]

For my research in writing an essay on Anime Music Videos for Mechademia's next issue, one topic that has come to my attention recently is the attitude toward videos for not having a story. It seems primarily videos which incorporate special effects for no other reason than to have them often don't carry a narrative structure or is too subtle to see because of all the visual eye candy. My questions are for both as an editor & as a viewer ....

Why do you care if a video has (or does not have) a narrative structure or theme?
Should it matter?
What do you like about a "narrative" video versus one that does not seem to have one?

Please, I'm looking for intelligent feedback because this is a paper for an Academic Journal to be published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Thank You,

~ Dann C.

[Ojamajo_LimePie]

It depends on what catagory the video is in. I don't expect a dance videos to have a story, since its meant to make people feel upbeat and excited. Comedy videos rarely have anything resembling a plot, yet they're often among the most beloved AMVs. Both of these catagories succeed in there purpose without requiring a narrative.

In my opinion, anime music videos are about conveying emotions. A happy, bouncy emotion can be attained without a deep narrative, but sadness is hard to have without a reason. That's why drama videos usually have a definite story; they need characters and situations that the audience can empathise with in order to produce the intended emotion.

[Otohiko]

I think "Narrative", as a definition, is too basic. There's many more ways to have a conceptual structure than a "narrative" per se; it doesn't have to be a 'story', it doesn't have to have a linear sequence, and there doesn't have to neccesarily be a theme. Not to say these aren't valid and good ways to do it.

But as far as conceptual structure, yes. For me, AMVs consist of two levels: visual structure and conceptual structure. These two are key elements to my perception of a video. The visual structure is always there. Without it, an AMV doesn't work, doesn't flow. But to really flow, it has to make a certain amount of sense on a more abstract level, and that's where a solid conceptual center (and not neccesarily narrative) comes in.

[requiett]

It depends on what catagory the video is in. I don't expect a dance videos to have a story, since its meant to make people feel upbeat and excited.

Unless you're like me. I had to go & add a narrative to my Phantasmagoria dance vid.

[inthesto]

I'm going to be ridiculously subjective here, but you asked for my opinion. Keep in mind that all proceeding statements are MY OPINION, and thus you will not do a whole lot of good trying to argue them.

I agree with Oto that an AMV has two levels: The visual and the conceptual. While a video obviously needs both to be a good video; however, the conceptual level is much more important than the visual. Why is this? Well, a lot of people seem to be able to appreciate a video that works only on a visual level. These videos are generally categorized as "eye-candy". One generalization I've heard for these sort of videos is that they're "awesomely fun to watch if you turn your brain off."

Now that's where I run into a problem.

Something is not really "good" if it requires the de-tuning of the brain in order to enjoy it. At best, they are enjoyable at a shallow leve, i.e. one watches it, thinks "hurr hurr, purty", and closes it. On the other hand, a video with a solid, thought- or emotion-provoking concept cuts deeper. A good video will leave one with thoughts as to what the editor was trying to convey, and what the video actually means. Eye-candy just can't evoke that from a person, and that feeling is one much more satisfying than that for the "pretty effects" one.

It's like the difference between button-mashing in Dead or Alive and learning combos in Street Fighter (yes, I did have to draw an analogy to video games; fuck you). The former can give one a sort of shallow satisfaction, but it doesn't last long and holds little substance. The latter really roots into something within the mind, and thus makes for a better video.

[Orwell]

I've always thought of AMV's as the telling of something, whether it be the story told in the song, a story created by the editor, a joke or comedy bit. Anyone can put clips on a timeline some can create very impressive effects like Metros latest video. Not to say that wasn't impressive, and I liked it, but the test of creator's true ability is how well they tell that story. Those without a narritave will rarely be as strong as those with a story somehow intertwined with the video, at least if the story is told well.

[JCD]

I mostly agree with Ojamajo_LimePie.

I watch AMVs for my own enjoyment, how they archieve enjoyment actually comes town to individual videos. It might be with or without story, with or without stunning visuals. If I enjoyed it, then the creator succeeded in making a good video in my point of view

[Kai Stromler]

Why do you care if a video has (or does not have) a narrative structure or theme?
Should it matter?
What do you like about a "narrative" video versus one that does not seem to have one?

In my perspective, a music video does not strictly need a narrative structure, and many, particularly in the AMV world, are significantly damaged by having one (or, more accurately, attempting to have one), and the root cause of this is the presumption in AMV that narrative structures are always desirable or necessary.

When handled correctly, a music video can have a narrative structure independent of or dependent on the music in the video, and can profit by having such. The problem is that a lot of people in AMV see narrative as a pancaea for their creative problems, and since they have an existing narrative and know the existing narrative of their video source material, they use that one instead of creating and independently supporting their own (remember, we're talking about people with creative problems here). The result is intimately familiar to anyone who's watched a few bad Cowboy Bebop videos: all they "tell" the same "story", using basically the same scene selection, but rely significantly on the audience also being familiar with the narrative being scalped in order to fill in the blanks and make the video and its "story" significantly better than what is actually on the screen.

Absent narrrative, if narrative cannot be trusted to be handled correctly, what does short-form music video have left? How about visual instantiation of the music? Of course, to arrive at that conclusion, you have to come in from a different perspective.

The great mass of amateur music video today is inspired not by the music source, but by the visuals. If you go back to the infamous Caldwell-stalking usenet logs from the early part of the last decade, you can see that these used to be called "anime fan videos", not "anime music videos". The emphasis is on the visuals, and accordingly seems to demand narrative. This is only one side of the coin, and those who approach it from the music side are less likely to say "what song can I use to say or show something about title X" and more likely to say "what title can I use to demonstrate or explicate something in song Y".

If the starting point is the music rather than the visuals, narrative is largely restricted to visually instantiating the existing narrative of the lyrics (discussion of the development of moderately related narrative from lyrical and musical/atmospheric sources, as done in most professional music videos, is somewhat out of scope as few people do this in the amateur ranks). The emphasis shifts from the video source as prime vehicle to the video as simply a visual expression of what's going on audially. If this is done well, there is no need for a narrative to hold the video up, and the attempt to include one using conventional filmic techniques may end up conflicting with the visual presentation.

It can't be repeated enough: short-form music video is not the same as conventional film. With conventional film, you are unrestricted in your use of images to construct whatever you want; in short-form music video, there is a hard constraint in the form of the audio track. Whatever form that ends up taking, that is going to be constant throughout the video, and a self-sufficient piece of work in its own right. The video must be consonant with the audio, and this is an ediorial requirement, much stronger than the conceptual requirement that the audio must be consonant with the visual source. We don't talk about editing AMV as a thoroughly synthetic process where something is made out of nothing; we talk about "editing to" some existing music piece. If we edit the audio at all, we do that first, then build the video track around it.

If we can accept musical primacy in short-form music video, the questions about narrative substantially go away. A given video can have as much narrative as the music will allow, and should have, at maximum, only as much as the music can support. A successful video is one in which the creator and the audience agree on these levels with respect to the song.

To sum up:
Narrative is not strictly necessary in short-form music video.
Narrative, if mishandled, can significantly damage a music video. Amateur music video is at significant risk for this.
The music, which remains constant and usually in the same self-sufficient shape that the artist released it in, is the backbone and superstructure of a short-form music video.
The music, through the vision of the creator, should dictate what elements at what weight will be present in the visual and conceptual levels.



Mandatory disclaimer:
The foregoing is written by a confirmed thrasher who takes the pure-performance genre of short-form music video as an ideal. He has only trivial prior experience in film criticism and, despite the ridiculous incidence of jargon, no academic qualifications in this area. If any of the foregoing made sense, it may well have been by accident.

--K

[[Mike of the Desert]]

Interesting, very interesting topic, in my personal opinion, I would answer like this:

Generally, an Anime Music Video have a concept idea at his beginning, usually in that phase, some kind of Storyboard is created.. Not Storyline, Storyboard, a general idea of what clips you want in it, for example. Generally, this concept evolve, or starts initially as already a "storyline Amv".

I know I'm not been clear, my post is quite numb.

But let reorganize ideas, people care about a Storyline because usually it is something that gives particular emotions, 2nd because is proof of searched editing. But even a "only-action" Amv can give some type of emotion? Yes. Usually, what people do NOT like, are those videos that with a lot of action try to tell a story, or that simply are created "casually", in my opinion, there are two type of videos I like, and generally two type of videos that can describe the two sides of an AMV:

- Storyline/Depth Animemusicvideos, planned with a story that is telled trough the clips, without matter if they are action packaged, full of effects, or all the opposite. If a video has his MAIN in a story, we are in this situation.

- ACTION Amv, Videos that do NOT have a story, that do NOT try to have one and that do NOT want to have one, pure action, usually, with this kind of video, give emotion is more difficult, and usually it need a high level of action synch.

[Kalium]

I had wondered who would be the first to write an AMV piece for Mechademia. Now I know. (if you need any proofreaders, drop me an email, I'd be happy to)

Anyway, my $.02:

As I've discussed some before, there are multiple kinds of conceptual frameworks. (link). Not all of them require a formal narrative framework. Telling a story, obviously, requires some form of a narrative if the story is to be conveyed with any semblance of coherency.

Taking the goal of an AMV as to express something to the viewer, then a narrative is not always needed. If what is to be expressed in a single emotion, such as joy, sorrow, or anger, then a full-fledged narrative is not only overkill, but likely harmful to the goal as vieweres tend to focus on story rather than theme. The same rationale applies if the message is a concept or idea, although a story may be a useful tool in this case.

As an example, take As The World Crashes Down. This video is a theme, aiming largely to inspire sorrow. There's no strong narrative, and I would argue that there is no narrative worth mentioning at all. This only strengthens the video, as it forces the viewer to focus on the general theme rather than a story which may or may not be present.

As a similar example, take The Look. Again, any sense of narrative is weak at best, but that's not the point. The point is the pattern in characterization. Again, the lack of narrative only strengthens the video. A narrative would have been difficult to construct around that theme with those sources, and likely would have complicated the message.

On the flip side, though, sometimes the narrative is all that matters. Let's take Whisper of the Beast as an example here. As Kai Stromler mentioned above, many videos rely on familiarity with the original anime to fill in the blanks for the viewer. In this case, I found that familiarity with the original story actually complcated comprehension of the video's narrative. Here, the narrative was strongly constructed independantly of the source anime (I can't comment on the audio, since I don't know German), to the point that without said narrative the video would be a disjointed and confusing look at some heavily masked bits of Naruto.

In between, there are videos like SHELLSHOCK, where you have both a narrative and a message intertwined. Hypothetically, the same message could have been communicated without the story. The message would have been weaker for it, though. In the same manner, it's hypothetically possible to tell the same story without the same message (a very different spin, obviously). However, the story would have suffered with a different tone. Here, we have a good example of how narrative and theme can be used bolster one another while still being somewhat independant.

Now, to address a different point entirely:

If we can accept musical primacy in short-form music video, the questions about narrative substantially go away. A given video can have as much narrative as the music will allow, and should have, at maximum, only as much as the music can support. A successful video is one in which the creator and the audience agree on these levels with respect to the song.

I would rather have the concept take primacy, with the audio and video as two intertwined mediums for relating it. From this perspective, it becomes not a question of "does a narrative matter here?", but rather a question of "does a narrative help here?", a significant distinction.

If one accepts musical primacy, then videos like Seiji Warheart become conceptually difficult, as it's certainly not a visual instantiation of the audio. For that matter, it's not a reguritation of the anime in some form with the audio as a footnote. The central idea of Seiji Warheart is parody, taking the audio seriously to mock the video while simultaneously doing the reverse.

Putting either the video or the audio into a dominant position as a viewing paradigm causes conceptual problems, whereas taking them both as subordinate to and the medium for a concept tends to be more all-encompassing. It also solves the problem of the place of narrative, making it a tool similar to audio remixing and crossfading. While on a different level, since narrative is constructed rather than instantiated, that doesn't change the status from that of a tool.

Hrm, OK, that wound up being more like $2 than $.02. Take the above as you will.