Narrative Analysis: The Vamps - "Hurricane"

I have decided to Analyse the narrative for The Vamps music video for their song 'Hurricane'. The song is the theme song for the movie 'Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day' and because of this part of the video is clips for the movie. I will analyse the narrative of the scenes filmed for the video which are a recreation of the movies core idea starring the singer of the song, The Vamps. The video shows The Vamps having a very bad day before their video shoot for the 'Hurricane' song.

Tim Sullivan argues that that all media texts tell some kind of story. This video tells the story of The Vamps preparing for a video shoot but everything is going wrong before the shoot begins. The overall narrative is essentially telling the story of someone having a bad day where everything seems to be against them. This does not specifically relate to a set culture but is more something that everyone goes through at times, meaning that everyone can relate to the story.

Diegesis - The Diegesis of this video appears to bea surburban area that is home to The Vamps house. This is a created diegesis as in real life The Vamps would not live together in the same place.

Verisimilitude - The video features verisimilitude as we follow The Vamps through the day in time order and all the settings are realistic with each of the story elements being things that could possibly happen. However, things are added for comical effect as all of these events are unlikely to happen in one day.

Kate Domallie says that every story ever told can be fitted into one of eight narrative types; Achilles, Candide, Cinderella, Circe, Faust, Orpheus, Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Iseult. In my opinion this video fits into the 'Candide' category as it features the main protagonists being put down and having everything go wrong throughout of the video only to come out on top and complete their video shoot successfully at the end.

Vlaidimir Propp states that the characters in a narrative could be placed into seven broad categories. This is based on his analysis of 100 Russian Folk tales. The characters he found are; The Villain, The Donor, The Helper, The Princess and Her Father, The Hero, The Dispatcher and The False Hero. The Hero in the video would be seen as The Vamps as at the end of the video they have concurred over all the efforts to ruin their day. The Villain could be seen as the day itself as it is trying to cause the hero distress. The Princess could be seen as Bella Throne as she appears to be the love interest of one of the band members.

Tzvetan Todorov states that a narrative can be placed into five stage;

• Stage 1: A point of stable equilibrium. This point could be seen to happen at the beginning of the video where the band is asleep and nothing has gone wrong yet.
• Stage 2: The stability is disrupted by some kind of force. This could be seen as the sound of the alarm clock ringing as this is what signals the beginning of the bad day in the video.
• Stage 3: Recognition that the disruption has taken place. This could be seen as all the points when the band has things go wrong or when they first notice that a lot of things are going wrong on the day.
• Stage 4: An action directed against the disruption. This would be the decision to go to the video shoot despite all the problems they have been having.
• Stage 5: Restoration of a new state of equilibrium. This would be them successfully completing the video shoot without any problems.

Adrian Telly says that the sight of an object, location or event can signify what events are about to occur. An example of this is a gun appearing in a Westen signifying a shootout is about to occur. An example of this in my video is the pyjamas the band is wearing. Because of how they look we will immediately guess that the videos is going to be a comedy. Also another example is the appearance of the drums at the beginning of the video, which we immediately assume are going to be played.

Claude Levi-Strauss states that all stories create Binary Opposites e.g. good vs. evil, rich vs. poor, black vs. white. In this video we see a case of good vs. evil as the band would be considered the good and the day would be considered the evil.

Sven Carlsson states that music videos in general can fit into one of two categories; performance clips or conceptual clips.

• When a video mostly shows an artist singing or dancing, the clip can be considered a performance clip.
• When a video shows something else during its duration, often with artistic intent, it can be considered a conceptual clip.

This can then be separated into three further categories;

• Performance: The video features filmed performance that could be either singing, dancing or instrumental performance.
• Narrative: The video contains a short narrative with the song playing in the background.
• Art: The video contains no clear narrative and appears to be just a random set of shots.

The Vamp's video could be seen as a combination between a performance clip and a narrative clip as features of both appear in the video. Towards the end of the video the narrative and performance combine but up until that point the narrative had been more dominant than the performance aspect of the video had been.

Carlsson also states that a artist is a commercial exhibitionist who performs to sell music. In this video The Vamps appear as a fictionalised version of themselves in order to promote their song and sell their music.