While researching information of the essay topic to argue for against if music the purest form of storytelling, I explored this storytelling idea in any random album. I decided to explore this is Miley Cyrus’ ‘Bangerz’ album. This album has a very simple and structured narrative over the whole album, even arguable that is has little turning points in its acts.

This is noted in the original no-deluxe edition.

The album opens with the song ‘Adore You’ setting up the story of Cyrus being hopelessly in love, and devoted,  to another, saying that she will always love him more than he will. Over the next couple of songs, she talks about sex, noted in the song ‘#GetItRight’ which also has a slight martial type sound towards the conclusion of the song. Next the next couple of songs, like ‘Love Money Party’, ‘Wrecking Ball’ explores Cyrus’ lifestyle but starts to show the fractures in her relationship, first setup in ‘Adore You’.

The turning point of the album is the song ‘FU’ which is a real juxtaposition to the album’s first song, where is details Cyrus’ anger against her partner for what sounds like him cheating on her. ‘Adore You’ and ‘FU’ are both ballads on the but both lyrically and through Cyrus’ vocal range explore two different scenarios. Ironically, the song after ‘FU’ is ‘Do My Thang’ which is the only song on the original album that only really talks about Cyrus and not about a relationship. In the song she says she’ll be ok, and is gaining her independence back. This song is leading to the album’s last song, to me considered as the narrative’s climax, ‘Someone Else’.

In ‘Someone Else’ Cyrus sings about that love doesn’t live with her anymore because someone took it from her but because of it she became someone completed different; she became someone else.

The range from the song ‘Adore You’ to ‘FU’ to ‘Someone Else’ really has a cohesive narrative that shows a drastic character development.

Mollie, Sarah, Mardy and I have chosen to base our transmedia project around a fictional person who is an exaggerated example of modern young people who are obsessed with internet fame and online gratification.

This person will have been featured in the background of a viral video, this triggered their obsession with their online persona. The narrative will be based through her online profiles.

We have a few important factors decided, but of course have not

Through learning “The Dark Knight” viral campaign, it was interesting to learn how through several outlets, creating a transmedia concept, that artist could create hype for a film but still actual create a story to create the hype rather than have just random posters and television commercials.

It was interesting to see that little stories, like the scavenger hunt, were their own little narrative but in the big picture related the film’s overall narrative. Using the different outlets, they allowed the world of the film to become more rounded and feel like an actual place for the audience, for example “The Gotham Times” helped this.

After discussing that everything is a remix, and that nothing is original, I decided to see if I could randomly compose a lyrics of a song using several different segments of different songs by different artists. I by random choose the lyrics and wrote them separately  on cue cards then randomly arranged them to see if they were cohesive.

The lyrics were picked up by the following songs:

“Look What They’ve Done to My Song” – Melanie Saflea

“I Lied” – Nicki Minaj

“The Crying Game” – Nicki Minaj

“Someone Else” – Miley Cyrus

“Drive” – Miley Cyrus

“Video Girl” – FKA twigs

“Pendulum” – FKA twigs

“Give Up” – FKA twigs

“National Anthem” – Lana Del Rey

“Tropico poem” – Lana Del Rey

“Tears Dry On Their Own” – Amy Winehouse

The final product reads as such:

“If you’re looking for love, know that love don’t live here anymore,

‘cause what happens if I fall in love then you cut me loose.

All I want is to love and be loved,

I know that sometimes you wish I’d go away, away

But I’d wished that you know that I’m here to stay, stay

I always knew I never wanted this,

I never thought it could happen.

You acted like you wanted this but you led me on.

I shouldn’t play myself again

I need somebody to hold me

Just nod your head and give up.

Overdose and dying on our drugs and our love,

You’re gonna get yourself broke one day.

And I’m coming undone, cause the tears don’t end,

If the people are buying tears then I’ll be rich someday.

So lonely trying to be yours,

But maybe I’ll be alright.

I’m hurting myself.

Hold me close,

Don’t let me go,

I hope tell me now this is not the end.

It could feel like paradise, paradise lost.”

Very interesting ideas were presented in class of what certain conventions a writer should follow in order to create a narrative. The TED talk by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton raised some unique conventions such as rebelling against the normal. For example, at the time of the making of Toy Story, Stanton and the other writer’s of the film were told by Disney to have musical numbers in the film. Animated films of this time were all musicals as it was more appealing, but Pixar rebelled against this and create a great non-musical animated film. This interested me as I believe that Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds was using this convention of rebelling against the normal standards of story telling, as the radio play used realism to tell the story.

Another point that Stanton spoke of was that as an audience we should feel empathy for the characters, mainly the narrative’s protagonist.   This idea works in Welles’ War of the Worlds as the success of the story comes from having empathy of the normal civilians being attacked in the radio drama, which can be considered to tie in why the radio drama caused such a mass panic in audiences, as the empathy of these civilians made the audience that this attack could happen to anyone, themselves included.

The last idea that Stanton spoke of was that characters’ have to have an “itch” that they want to scratch. Mainly it’s the characters’ desires and intentions. This is noticeable in all conventionally storytelling. In Frankenstein, Henry Frankenstein’s itch is to create life, bend medical rules, and play god. Where is a in class peer group discussion it was analyzed that in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ Norman Bates’ itch is too please his mother.