Vladimir Propp

"Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.

Vladimir Propp broke up fairy tales into sections. Through these sections he was able to define the tale into a series of sequences that occurred within the Russian fairytale. Usually there is an initial situation, after which the tale usually takes the following 31 functions. Vladimir Propp used this method to decipher Russian folklore and fairy tales. First of all, there seem to be at least two distinct types of structural analysis in folklore. One is the type of which Propp's Morphology is the exemplar par excellence. In this type, the structure or formal organization of a folkloristic text is described following the chronological order of the linear sequence of elements in the text as reported from an informant. Thus if a tale consists of elements A to Z, the structure of the tale is delineated in terms of this same sequence. Following Lévi-Strauss (1964: 312), this linear sequential structural analysis we might term "syntagmatic" structural analysis, borrowing from the notion of syntax in the study of language (cf. Greimas 1966a:404). The other type of structural analysis in folklore seeks to describe the pattern (usually based upon an a priori binary principle of opposition) which allegedly underlies the folkloristic text. This pattern is not the same as the sequential structure at all. Rather the elements are taken out of the "given" order and are regrouped in one or more analytic schema. Patterns or organization in this second type of structural analysis might be termed "paradigmatic" (cf. Sebag 1963:75), borrowing from the notion of paradigms in the study of language."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp

He identified that “Five categories of elements define not only the construction of a tale, but the tale as a whole.”:

1. Functions of dramatis personae
2. Conjuctive elements (ex machina, announcement of misfortune, chance disclosure – mother calls hero loudly, etc.)
3. Motivations (reasons and aims of personages)
4. Forms of appearance of dramatis personae (the flying arrival of dragon, chance meeting with donor)
5. Attributive elements or accessories (witch’s hut or her clay leg)

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/propp/propp.htm

By appyling these elements to our video and by basing our video on the folk nursery rhyme we will be able to make our video more abstract and more suitable to our chosen genre and more appealing to our niche audience.

The cat and the fiddle

After discussing our video with a teacher we came to the conclusion it needed to be more abstract. In order to do this we are going to add a new character in to our film and base it on the tradition folk nursery rhyme 'The cat and the fiddle. Our new character will be a cat playing a fiddle as not only will this refer to the nursery rhyme but it will also make the video a lot more abstract. We are going to shoot at the same location and use all of the same props but we are going to use a lot more different camera angles to try and make our video more abstract and intresting so it isnt as boring.

Teacher review

After showing a teacher our first edit she gave us some feedback and her opinion of what needed to be changed our added to it in order to improve our final grade. She said she thought it was slightly boring, which both me and karim agree with, and that we need to be a lot more abstract and break the rules of conventional folk. The video needs to be more upbeat and faster to make it less boring but she did like the use of the owl mask, so in order to make it more abstract we are going to add more features like that in to our video. We have taken her advice on board and we will do our best to make our the video the absolute best it can be.

Digipak front and back cover digital drafts

This is the first draft for the front cover of my digipak. It is conventional as it features the name of the artist, name of the album and a picture of the artist himself. It is also conventional to folk as the artist is in a woodland are and wearing conventional folk clothing. The artists name and album title are in a bold white font against a black and white image, I chose to put the font in white in order to make it stand out against the dark background. I chose to use a black and white image to give it a more folky look.

This is the second draft for a front cover. It is very similar to my first draft as i have used the same image and have featured the artists name. However, this time I have changed the colour and positioning of the text. I dont like this draft as much as the first as I dont think the colour of the text works.

This is the third draft of a front cover of my digipak. This time I have used a different image and this time it is a colour image. Again the the image is conventional to folk as it is of fields and woodland. I have placed the name of the artist and the name of the album, which is in a  bold black font, against the light blue sky, this makes it really stand out.

This is the first draft for the back cover of my digipak. It is similar to my first front cover draft as it features a black and white image which is also conventional to folk as it features trees and open fields. It is conventional as it has the track titles and lengths of the song. It also has a bar code in the bottom left hand corner which you would expect to find on the back of an albumor digipak.

This was the second draft of the back cover for my digipak. It is very similar to my first draft, the only difference is the text is in a different position. I have used the same image as my first draft but I prefer my first one as I think the text looks better in the middle of the image opposed to the down the right hand side, but it is again conventional to folk and album covers.

This the third draft of a back cover. Instead of using a black and white image I have used a colour image this time, and this time if features the artist stood in a big open field of really long grass. The open field along with the way the artist is dressed make this back cover conventional of folk. It features the track names down the left hand side of the image which is conventional of album covers.I believe out of the three is the definitely the worst and I will not be using this as my final one.

Digipak drawn drafts

Front cover:

Inside cover:

Back cover:

Disc:

The Kooks digipak analysis

This is the digipak from The Kooks debut album 'Inside in inside out'. It was released in 2006 on Virgin records.

Front cover:

The front cover features a long shot a wide shot of the whole band playing their instruments. They are in a white room and they are all wearing dark clothing which makes them stand out against their background. They all have scruffy hair cuts and are wearing casual clothing which represents them as a band and their genre. They all also look really relaxed which could represent them and their music. The title is the only thing in colour, it as at the top in the centre and is in red. The red could connote a couple of things. It could connote love and their love for the music and the band, or it could connote their passion for the music.

Back cover:
The back cover has a very similar image to front cover only it is taken from a slightly different angle and is slightly blured. It has the conventional track titles and length of the song. The text is in black to make it stand out against the white background. It also has the conventional bar code and credits on the right hand side.

Spine:
The spine is in red and features the name of the band and the album title in black and white font. The record labels name is also on the spine, this is to promote them and make the institution recognisable.

Disc:
The disc is in red which connote a number of things from love and passion to danger. The hole in the CD is an used as an 'O' in the artists name and the rest of their name is in black font which stands out against the red background. The album title is in a white font which also stands out against the red disc.