Noir Story Telling Via Music

To look at other areas of storytelling i looked towards music. Specifically concept albums. These types of albums allow for the creation of a character, a world, and then a journey for that character to flow through as told via the artists impressions.

To do this i took two different artists from different backgrounds and styles of music and also made sure they weren't of the same nationality.

These artists being Toronto's Fucked Up and their album 'David Comes to Life' and England's Plan B and his album 'The Defamation of Strickland Banks'.

These albums were chosen because of the fact they are roughly of the same length and share similarities in structure as they have a central character set in their fictional world and the album follows the story the character has to go on.

However they do have differences, for example Fucked Up's album ends on a massive plot twist and then can reset back to the beginning, where as Plan B's record ends on a cliffhanger and leaves it an open ended interpretation for the listener.

From analyzing these two albums i have found that they both follow the basic narrative structure of Todorov's Three Act structure, where there is the happy or normal beginning, the problematic middle and then the resolution at the end, whether it be happy or sad, it ends.

For example in David Comes to Life, the 2nd track, Queen of Hearts, is where get our first introduction to the story world and our central character David.

This can also be seen in The Defamation of Strickland Banks, in track 1 and 2, Love Goes Down and Writing's on the Wall, where the character of Strickland is having a good time and this also carries on and leads to the second problematic act with the songs Stay Too Long and She Said.

Furthermore through David Comes To Life, we realize that David as a character is becoming self aware and breaking the metaphorical fourth wall, however all the while we as an audience are watching his plight from behind a fifth wall, so it could work as an interesting story direction. 

But after delving into the structure of these albums, i can see a very specific choice for myself to apply to my film. This choice being do i want to end on a true resolution, a cliff hanger, or do i want to make it cyclical and have it almost as a never ending loop.

Bibliography
- http://www.vulture.com/2011/06/fucked_up_explain_the_epic_tal.html
- http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/flint/index.ssf/2011/05/in_defamation_plan_b_tells_sto.html
- http://www.indiana.edu/~audioweb/T206/three-act.html