Narrative Technique - Framing Devices

Framing Devices are used in film and television to create a 'story within a story' and establish a new scene in a different location, stemmed from the original setting. In other words "the framing device is a gateway that sets the stage for a deeper journey into story."

Framing devices are very common in film and television, including music videos. At the moment we are unsure if we are definitely or definitely not going to use a framing device in our final production, but if so we believe it could be easily implemented. The cork board full of photos, as previously mentioned throughout the planning posts on this blog, could be utilised as a transition to a new location, perhaps by zooming into the photo and it being the opening freeze frame for a scene.


1) Death Cab for Cutie - 'Grapevine Fires'





This music video is an animated video in a paper/ 2D style. The video very cleverly uses framing devices at the start and dotted throughout the duration of the song. The video begins with a slow zoom into a photograph of the boy on the bike (the framing device). There are other photographs around it and after zooming in, the freeze frame becomes a shot of the boy cycling down the street. Another example of a similar use and implementation of a framing device can be seen at 0:45, where the photo of the brother and his girlfriend comes to life. We could very easily utilise this technique because we are planning to establish a close relationship between the photographs on the cork board and the locations the characters are in. It would be relatively easy to imitate this technique in our video by zooming into a photo and it becoming a moving shot of a character. Although, it may be technically challenging.

2) The Chemical Brothers - 'The Salmon Dance'.


The official music video for The Chemical Brothers' 2007 track 'The Salmon Dance' similarly features a short prologue with a framing device. A boy is woken by faint music and when he investigates he finds the fish in his fish tank singing and making music. The fish tank itself becomes a framing device as the camera zooms in slowly to establish the fish tank as the new setting for the narrative. This music video takes a characters point of view of an object or a setting and by zooming in and literally filling the screen with it, construct a new location for the story to progress. Perhaps we could utilise this technique in our final production. For instance zooming in on a bench a character is looking at and cutting (through zooming in) to a flashback of both characters sitting on it.

3) Blur - 'Coffee and TV'



The framing device featured in the music video for Blur's 'Coffee and TV' is a bit more subtle. Instead of acting as a new location/ setting to help progress the narrative, the framing device in this video simply aids the construction of the storyline. From the offset we know that a boy is missing, due to the advertisement on the milk carton. We then see a framed photograph (the same photograph) beside an unhappy father being comforted by his presumed wife, clearly the boys family. Instead of establishing a 'story within a story' this framing device simply contributes to the progression of the plot and gets the audience up to speed with the storyline immediately. This technique is something we plan to use. Not only do we have the cork board filled with photos of a couple, we discussed potentially using of a couple of framed photos of them in the initial shots of the girls bedroom. This gives the immediate impression to the audience that these characters are/ were in a relationship. Achieving this would prove useful in introducing the characters as well as the storyline of the music video in general.

4) Bjork - 'Bachelorette'.



The music video for Björk's 'Bachelorette' uses a very unconventional narrative. As well as a 'Russian Doll' narrative of 'stories within stories', the video predominantly uses a cyclical narrative because it starts and ends in the same place (a woods). The character discovers a self writing book that becomes a bestseller and she gets her own theatre show. However, it all gets undone and she ends up exactly where she started. During our production meetings, we have discussed using a similar narrative structure to this video. Our initial location is the boys room with the cork board full of photos. At the end of the music video when the two characters are reunited, we are thinking of freezing  the final frame, of them holding hands perhaps, then, this freeze frame becomes a photograph that the audience see on the cork board in the boys bedroom. In Björk's music video, the narrative has developed but it has gone full circle back to the videos first location, similar  to the ideas for our music video.   The music video for 'Bachelorette' also uses a framing device in the shape of the book she finds "buried deep in the ground." This closely dictates the narrative of the video as the audiences sees the book writing itself and the plot following what it says. For instance, it writes: "I then got on the train" and it then cuts to the character on the train. We could use a similar technique of objects dictating the direction of the narrative. For instance, the audience could see a photograph of a bench on the cork board and then we cut to a character interacting/ walking past this bench.