Rock Video Narrative

Narrative within the Rock genre is usually either closely linked to the performance or shot in a completely separate location. The narrative usually relates to lyrics of the song and features a personal issue such as a relationship between father and daughter, this is usually so that the audience can easily relate to the video as well as the lyrics within the song. In order to gain a better idea of concept behind narrative story lines within Rock videos and to understand better how to portray a story line to an audience I decided to look at Nickleback's How You Remind Me as this is a great example of narrative within a Rock video.

The narrative within the video is the relationship between the lead singer of the band and a girl, most likely an ex girlfriend. There are a series of flashbacks or memories throughout the video in which the lead singer is seen remembering the girl and imagines seeing or being with her which links reference to the connection between narrative, lyrics and title of the song "how you remind me". In one particular memory the girl is seen to be extremely flirtatious with the lead singer which is the sort of relationship we are thinking of portraying within our own video. The color between the memories and reality has been edited so that what is being shown in the present time is  that of warm colors almost a shade of yellow and presents a positive vibe where as the memories are  more of a cold blue/grey that give the impression they are seen as more negative. There are also several lyric's that relate to the narrative such as "i said i love you and i swear i still do" as well as "how you remind me, of what I really am" as he is seen within one of the memories or flashbacks remembering the girl. Towards the end of the video, the narrative meets the performance in the sense that the studio or building that the performance had been filmed in, the girl is now seen in the same room with the lead singer and then the audience however the story changes when the lead singer pushes back the girl and walks away from her during one of the memories giving the impression he is done with her reminding him of what he used to be. This ending is interesting as we are thinking about a similar ending where a girl gets left behind. The overall impression of the video is a relationship gone sour and the lead singer is remember old memories and how he "used to be" when in the relationship with the girl.

It is important to understand narrative concepts with Rock videos as it will be useful when designing and creating our own, it also important to look at this particular video as it portrays a similar narrative to the one we are thinking about using. This will be good to look back on nevertheless for future reference.