Research Proposal

The title for my research project is going to be 'Do Music Videos need a strong Narrative in order to be successful? In order to explore this investigation I will use the following music videos as media texts that will form the focus of my investigation. 'Kanye West- All falls down' and 'Drake hold on we're going home'. Both videos are very different in the narrative, which is why I decided to pick these two; Drake has a very clear story-like narrative in perfect Harmony with the track whilst Kanye's narrative in his music video is almost random in contrast to his song.

The Song by Kanye West features a famous actress Syleena Johnson. The song itself in its lyrical form is about how no one really knows what they want to achieve life, some people are influenced by parents to do degrees but in the end it doesn't amount to anything, He is basically criticizing people for not having a passion.

Within the video however the narrative is based around Kanye following the actress Syleena Johnson to the airport where by he is rapping as in some shots he appears in front of the camera whilst others he appears to be holding it.

The video itself is well put together, the airport looks realistic which wouldn't of been possible without the various security checks and various terminals and staff, Towards the end of the video a iconic face appeared it was Common [a highly recognized hip hop artist] so for him to be included was kind of attracting three audiences fans of Syleena, Kanye's and Commons.

There are also quite a few smart editing skills used such as the effect being used enabling kanye to show on the outside of Syleena's glasses, there was also a x-ray effect where kanye was supposedly put through the x-ray conveyor belt. There is also various scenes where we see Kanye through mirrors or car windows but when we see him he doesn't appear to be holding a camera so to connotate what we are seeing is from Kanye’s eyes.

At the start of this video we have Syleena in the taxi waiting to get to the airport then by the bridge of the song we have Kanye in the bathroom rapping but not as high quality sound as before, Then by the end of the song we have Kanye back in the taxi looking at the open roof top as the aero plane flies away.

 My hunches are that in this investigation I'm going to find out that the answer to my question is no, It doesn't matter how a narrative is structured or how clear the storyline is as long as the music video or even the music track attracts attention from the audience it is still effective. I’m worried that the answer is too obvious but hopefully with my gathering of sources I can prolong a argument and somehow make my question unanswerable.

To support my research I'm going to use information from a book by Carol Verrallis called Experiencing Music video, a book by Kevin Williams called Why I still want my MTV, a Book called Exploring the Media by Christine Bell, an Extract from the magazine Media magazine and http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/issue08/heidipeeters.htm website.

Out of all of these I would say that the books would be the most reliable sources as these would of have to have been cross referenced for any mistakes by various other peers before publishing and if inaccurate information in inside one of these books [unless its fiction] then that could have serious consequences for the publishing company.

The Hampton press publishing company published for Example the book why I still want my MTV in 2003. Although the book maybe out of date slightly I'm positive some of the terms still remain now. Hampton press is a well-established publishing company that varies in publishing books to monographs to journals. Currently, Hampton press has a backlist of over 400 titles and publishes 35-40 new books annually; therefore I would say that this book is a very reliable source. This is my Proposal.