Research on Narrative Strategies in Lifestyle Home Scene Vlogs – Take the life vlog with 1 million+ likes in shakeyin platform as an example

. With the accelerating progress of the times, home life vlogs occupy a place in major social platforms as a short video form that can give users a short slow life feeling. In this paper, we analyze the unique narrative strategies of home vlogs in terms of narrative techniques and narrative styles with the help of angles, structures, sounds and shots, summarize the characteristics, and put forward corresponding suggestions.


Introduction
From 2012, when the first vlog appeared in YouTube, to 2018, when it entered China with 126 million users, and again until today, vlogs are still a very hot category in short videos.As an emerging mode of video, vlogging has different degrees of emphasis in different regions and different environments.Compared to some of the more exciting sports or travel vlogs abroad, in China, where the concept of family is strong, home life vlogs are loved by more people, these videos not only bring a relaxing and warm experience for the viewer, but also reflect the strong emotional resonance of China's vlog audience for "home".Nowadays, as the number of vlogs on home scenes is increasing, the industry and users are demanding more and more of them, and various narrative strategies have emerged.Narrative plays an influential role in the shooting of various types of videos.In the life class home scene vlog, various warm scenes and family story content need to be presented through various narrative methods.

Narrative techniques
In a vlog video of 1-3 minutes in length, the video creator's grasp of narrative techniques is equivalent to the structure of the overall video structure.Unlike storytelling performance videos such as microfilm, narrative skills are particularly important in such short videos with a strong sense of authenticity and a weak sense of boundaries.When the creator uses different perspectives and different narrative sequences to create and group the video, he will discover different connotations of his video.As a lifestyle vlog, the limited indoor scenes need rich narrative techniques to make the limited available scenes have unlimited storytelling and attraction.Home videos can't quickly catch the viewers' eyes with a short visual impact with a sense of excitement, but they can still have a large number of audiences with high stickiness through different perspectives and varied structures, and telling calm life stories with multiple narrative techniques that are not monotonous is fitting with the deeper connotation of vlogs, which will produce the effect of one plus one more than two.

Narrative angle
Narrative angle refers to the specific angle of the narrative language to observe and tell the content of the story, narrative angle as the first narrative form that users feel after opening the video, plays an important role in controlling the distance between the viewer and the home scene vlog, vlog video is always about the three words "immersion", narrative angle The narrative angle plays a decisive role in the audience's overall perception and perspective of the video.French literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov mentioned in his trichotomy that he divided the narrative perspective into internal perspective, external perspective and omniscient perspective according to the relationship between the narrator and the task of the degree of affection for the story.[1]And its theory is equally applicable in short video creation, in which it can be simply understood as the often said first-person perspective and third-person perspective, etc., but his division is more profound.[2] The choice of narrative perspective is the choice of how the creator reacts to and plans for the events after the story takes place.For example, using the God's perspective for a vlog will usually produce a state of unperturbedness in the viewer.

External perspective
The external viewpoint is the one with the least view and understanding of the narrator among the three viewpoints, and it is also the one with the highest objectivity.It can be simply explained as the narrator < character in the story.This perspective is more limited and can only simply describe the actions and stories that happen in the video, but cannot enter the heart of the main character of the story.For home vlogs, this kind of perspective is less used, and is usually found mostly in videos like "my boyfriend dubbed my video", where the interpreter only describes the actions of the characters in the picture, but cannot explain most of the inner behaviors and actions.

Internal perspective
The inner perspective is the one that gives the audience the strongest sense of experience and immersion among the three perspectives, where the narrator = the character in the story.This is also the most common perspective in home vlogs, where the filmmaker usually shoots alone with a tripod and other tools, recording his or her life for a day or a certain period of time, while the viewer follows the creator and feels the development of events, while the creator's inner changes and feelings are reflected to the audience in time.This form is one of the most respected forms of vlog creation, and the intimacy and sense of immersion brought by the outside perspective is incomparable to the other two perspectives.In the internal perspective narrative shooting, first-person perspective narrative and third-person perspective are common, also known as the main character perspective and witness perspective in literature, these two perspectives are able to know the inner reaction of the creator's perspective, and in short videos, the author is generally the main character, so this is also the advantage of the internal perspective narrative for vlog creation.

Omniscient perspective
Omniscient point of view is also commonly known as God's point of view, in a video its has an omniscient point of view that can readily explain and evaluate the thoughts and actions of the characters narrator>characters in the story, allowing the viewer to have an extremely transcendent ideological experience.In Principles of Literature, Wellek and Warren say: "He can write in the third person and be an 'omniscient' writer.This is certainly the traditional and 'natural' mode of narration.The author appears next to his work, like a speaker accompanying a slide show or documentary to give a lecture."Vlogs shot from this perspective are more suited to flashbacks, where the creator is placed at the beginning of the video at the end of the moment to record and briefly elaborate on the experience, and later at the beginning of the story from the beginning of the event, with some commentary on the next stage as the story progresses, giving the viewer a sense of omniscient anticipation.However, this approach greatly reduces the scope for the viewer's imagination.

Narrative structure
As an important reference for the editing sequence of vlogs, the narrative structure influences the overall structure of the video by adjusting the order of events.From simple straight narrative at the beginning to increasingly rich structure, whether in chronological order or structural content order, narrative structure has an important influence on the storytelling.In today's integrated media era, not only ordinary entertainment short videos have narrative functions, but also news short videos have new narrative structures，but traditionally in traditional journalism the identity of the narrator is generally that of an extra-story narrator.[3] From the rise of short video to the present, vlogs have been filmed according to the time structure to more and more structural frameworks, and the richness of the narrative structure makes the video interesting and influential, and the impression of vlogs as running accounts is also changing.

Traditional structure
The use of traditional structure in home vlogs still occupies most of the proportion, and presenting the development of the story one at a time according to the order of events is the simplest and clearest way to record life.From the viewer's point of view, the traditional structure of filming also makes it better understood, and vlog, short video itself is a form of pastime, and because of this traditional structure without too much effort is also loved by many viewers, the smooth order of life, simple and clear narrative structure, so that this kind of slow life short video logically in accordance with the order of development should have.However, it will inevitably make the audience aesthetic fatigue and tedious feeling, so many vlog creators will neutralize the blandness brought by the traditional structure through the wonderful ups and downs of story content or interesting forms.

Inverted Pyramid Structure
The inverted pyramid structure was originally used in news creation, but now it has gradually evolved.The creator puts the most important part of the video at the forefront, opens the door and quickly catches the audience's attention, and then develops and narrates the events in order of importance.The combination of inverted pyramid structure and omniscient perspective is very common in life vlogs.Secondly, this type of structure is also often seen in seeding vlogs, where the video creator first puts the things that need to be amenable at the top and then introduces them gradually, which is also one of the more popular structures nowadays.

Narrative style
In the time and space and narrative content is more limited in the life of the home scene vlog, rich narrative style is particularly important.Sound, camera language and so on affect the viewer's perception as a third party's sensory perspective in short videos.Each vlog uses a variety of narrative styles by different video creators to make the original bland life and events become artistic, and for short videos, "viewability" is one of the most important attributes to complete the "viewability" of the video.Through different background music, shooting angles, camera scheduling and other sight, which is also a video can stand out in the short video flood of today's necessary attributes.

The use of sound language
Since the release of the film "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, announcing the end of the era of silent films in the world, at the same time, the use of sound language began to play an extremely important role in the film.In different types of films or videos, different moods and rhythms are conveyed through sound source music or non-sound source music, whether in line dubbing or the use of music speakers, the use of sound language has now become an important part of today's videos.Similarly, in the creation of short video vlogs, the use of sound language is also indispensable, from the beginning of the filmmaker talking to the camera, to nowadays adding bgm, offcamera voice, internal os, etc., the rich sound language makes the warm home vlogs become more pyrotechnical, making it not only a documentary-style video, but also building a bridge with the audience on the other side of the camera, and becoming a key thing to bring the audience closer.

Simultaneous sound
Simultaneous sound is the best type of sound language to be realized in short videos, which can be accomplished in the shooting of one person and one cell phone mentioned at the early stage of vlog introduction.vlog maker collects sound while shooting the video, the sound is synchronized with the picture, and the whole presented by the picture is stronger, so that the viewers can be immersed in the same rhythm more easily.In the process of filming, direct income from a variety of external sources of music and sound, a sense of realism in life at the same time, but also need to avoid the appearance of excess noise.The recording of simultaneous sound is more attainable and matching for life home scenes vlogs, whether they are multi-person scenes or single person scenes, the words spoken by the producer in the picture at the same time will make the picture more complete, while the sense of immersion for the audience is also stronger and the story telling more complete and clear.

Dubbing
Dubbing in general means that the picture and the sound are separated from each other, and then the sound is recorded after the picture is shot, and finally the two are added together.For the production of home life vlogs, voiceover also exists, and is more common in the explanation of some products or life hacks.For example, in Yilun Lin's video, almost every commercial insert and recipe is explained by voiceover.Compared to direct radio in filming, the voice is clearer and more intelligible, but again, the dubbing is more deliberate, and it is possible to detect the deliberateness of the dubbing in terms of the viewer's habit of receiving the audio source.

Background Music
In today's short video platforms, at least seven out of ten short videos are accompanied by background music, and in home life vlogs, the creators usually pursue a sense of atmosphere, the essential element of which is a beautiful but not too much attention grabbing background music.Similarly, studies have shown that a piece of music that resonates well with the audience can greatly increase the completion rate of a video, and they are more likely to stay if they hear a song they like or a song they are familiar with.The use of background music in the field of vlogs is more extensive than that of simultaneous sound and dubbing.Among them, there is a situation, in some immersive home vlog video will even omit the simultaneous sound and dubbing and only retain the background music, so as to achieve the purpose of "immersion".

The use of footage
In the process of shooting various videos, lens language has always been the focus of public attention, in the narrative of vlogs, the use of the lens is an important output of the narrative angle, and the camera position, camera angle, number, etc. also affect the shooting of home vlogs.The use of camera plays an important role in the creation of the video, whether it is in terms of scene stretching, storytelling or the presentation of content images, different methods of camera use will give it a different narrative role.If you want to use a limited scene to shoot an infinite story and kernel, you should use the lens to present a variety of different visual angles and spatial structure.

Single-shot shooting
It is the initial way of short video production, which can be shot by cell phone, and all perspectives are done by using one lens view or in the process of shooting constantly adjust the position and angle of a machine, so its shooting has greater limitations.[2]Similarly, due to its simple operation and low requirements for equipment configuration, the audience is extremely wide, but also its single lens form, the viewer's perception is relatively single is also one of the important factors limiting its development.[4]

Multi-camera lens use
In different shooting angles to place different machines to shoot, better restore the environment in which the shooter is located, disguised use of the implementation of repeated techniques in the shooting, the picture is more rich and complete, the sense of immersion is stronger.Multicamera shots have a more film and television sense and a sense of sophistication, making it easier to stand out among the many videos with similar formats.but because of the higher requirements for equipment and operation, in the production of vlogs is not fully used.In this statistic, most of the vlog video creators with multi-camera film sense are some professionals or have a company team to help produce, it is more difficult for individual creators to complete such high-level creation, so if they can make better use of multi-camera lens shooting, the bonding for fans is extremely high.

Conclusion
In today's red period of vlog development, lifestyle home scene vlogs have unique development conditions and potential in China.The vlog is a comfort to the viewer's soul in today's fast-paced life, so the combination of the narrative method and rhythm of life vlogs, the use of various narrative strategies such as the combination of shots, the use of sound language, and the use of narrative structure to improve the use of professional narrative language and enhance the competitiveness of vlog videos will produce more high-quality home vlogs.Compared with other traditional videos or programs, the narrative shooting of short video vlogs can better satisfy the creators' narrative kernel of "self-centeredness", which not only satisfies the viewers' curiosity and experience, but also greatly deepens the passion of the self media creators and their desire to narrate the videos.[5] As a newborn entertainment software, short video can breed a more profound era and spiritual core in a relaxed and free rhythm, which is also the advantage of vlog video.With the audience's empathy in "home" and the rendering of narrative techniques, we will create happiness and discover happiness in life.