"Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework tasks"
Narrative theories can be applied to all media products. These theories can be applied to the video "Hollow - The Look". The featuring band are of indie/alternative genre and have a target audience of 15-25 year olds. The narrative theories can be applied to this bands song are cultural, symbolic and semantic.
Roland Barthes' narrative codes can be applied to the establishing shot from Hollow - The Looks music video. At 0:00 the cultural code can be applied, the shot relates to people in the same culture as the band themselves. This is because the audience may idolise the band as they play instruments or they may already play instruments therefore they have an understanding of what the band is doing. They can also make a link through the aesthetic things that can be seen. The band will be wearing attractive/similar style clothing to the genre audience they are targeting. The symbolic code can also be applied. It is symbolic that the band has deadpan facial expressions as this is the opposite to the bands real quirky personality. The semantic code that can be seen is that it is literal. What the audience can see is what is actually happening, the band are playing the instruments/music.
Narrative codes can also be applied to the shot 1:19 of Hollow's video. This shot represents culture as only an audience that appreciates musical instruments being played in an indie/alternative way will be able to understand the skill and talent behind playing the guitar.This shot can be seen as symbolic as it is showing off the modern guitar which is an adaptation of the ancient and noble instrument, whose history can be traced back over 4000 years. Many theories have been advanced about the instrument's ancestry. It has often been claimed that the guitar is a development of the lute, or even of the ancient Greek.
