Jamara Royle

Music Video Narrative

For our music video we have chosen the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. The band is of an Indie Rock genre which is why we are having a narrative about bullying as its follows the conventions of that particular genre.

Our video begins with a 28 second montage sequence of 1-5 second clips showing a teenage girl getting drunk; going to parties and/or clubs because she is being bullied. The clips will become parallel to the music as they will speed up as the music speeds up; to suggest that time is passing by. As soon as the music peaks there will be a close up shot of the girl’s eyes opening linking to the lyrics “I’m waking up”. There will be a pan of the room and other shots of the room showing all the empty alcohol bottles and mess in her room alluding to the after effects of her being bullied. We will then have diegetic sound of the girl sighing linking to the lyrics; “I’m breathing in the chemicals” this could also infer (to audiences) how she is fed up with her life and may want to change it. The next few lines of the song will be like a band scene but it’s just the girl singing or lip syncing as she gets ready for school.

The chorus will show the girl walking into school and walking down the hallway being laughed at by other students there will be a shot of another student who is indifferent and look sympathetic. The girl will have her hood up looking to the floor trying to ignore the jeers. The last part of the chorus will have a track and back-track shot zooming into the girls face and back out again, where the tone of the video will be more lugubrious and also dream like to indicate that we have gone into the girls mind.

As the song goes on to the third verse the shot will still be in her mind but she will be walking down an empty corridor and on the walls will be images of her memories showing her being bullied. As she walks down the corridor she will be confused as to what these images are but as the clip goes along she looks at them and remembers the words they said which will pop up on the screen for audiences to see what she was called. She will then get angry as she goes along and will rip them off the wall.

There will be a cut when the chorus plays and she will be at home crying. There will be various shots like close ups, mid shots and longs shots to show her emotion of her starting to realize she has had enough of this treatment. In addition to this she becomes angry and starts to smash stuff in her room and chuck her old clothing out the window. She will then get changed into new more stylish clothes from the back of her closet and go back to school.

For the last chorus the girl will walk back into school and down the hallway with the people who were laughing at her but are now staring at her. There will be mid shots and tracking shot to show how she is feeling small and insecure at first but as the music builds up for the last few lines of the chorus she will feel begin to feel more confident and ignores the people who are staring. She will enter the canteen and sit down and the person from the beginning

Jamara Royle

who was indifferent to the bullying will sit down with her and there will be a two shot of them smiling at each other.