Choose your A2 production. Start your exam answer by stating that you intend to answer in relation to Brief 2, the promotion package that you have created, composed of a trailer for your film (name) together with a film poster and film magazine (name).
Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.
These questions appear quite short and fit a common formula. You will be asked to apply ONE concept to one of your productions. This is a quite different task from question 1a, where you write about all of your work and your skills, as this one involves some reference to theory and only the one piece of work, as well as asking you to step back from it and think about it almost as if someone else had made it - what is known as ‘critical distance’.
Spend 35 minutes.
Narrative is one of the main ways that characters and their characteristics are relayed to the viewer. Narrative also dominates and affects other aspects of film such as editing. For example, if a film centres on the story of a particular character (Shaun in 'This Is England' (2006); Rita O'Grady in 'Made In Dagenham (2002), Jenny and Steve in 'Eden Lake' (2008)), it needs to be filmed and edited to privilege their point of view.
There are many ways of breaking down narrative structure. You may hear a movie described as a "classic Hollywood narrative", meaning it has three acts. News stories have their own structure. A lot of work has been done by literary theorists to develop ways of deconstructing a narrative.
A film trailer is ideal for narrative, as it depends upon ideas about narrative in order to function. A trailer must draw upon some elements of the film’s imaginary complete narrative arc in order to entice the viewer to watch it, without giving too much away. You have been introduced to a number of theories about narrative, but just in case, here’s a link to a PDF by Andrea Joyce, which summarises four of them, including Propp and Todorov.
CLAUDE LEVI STRAUSS
constant creation of conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual (light/darkness, movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate, control/panic), and to do with soundtrack. Binary oppositions.
Levi-Strauss and binary opposition – Claude Levi-Strauss identified a narrative system of 'binary opposites' in which symbols and ideas exist in relation to their opposites, with which they are in conflict. The theory is that this helps us draw meanings from a text, such as the need to side with a character who is 'good'. Typical binary oppositions are Good v Evil; Male v Female; Us v Them (Think 'Eden Lake', 'Ae Fond Kiss').
DAVID BORDWELL
(background biography)
Understand the position of Bordwell's ideas on classic Hollywood narrative in relation to other narrative frameworks here in this Slideshare on narrative theory
Classical Hollywood Cinema
Bordwell & Thompson Narrative Theory
A very interesting text, Three Dimensions of Film Narrative by David Bordwell is at http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/poetics_03narrative.pdf
In 'Three Dimensions of Film Narrative', Bordwell explains that a chain of events within a media form (such as a film or music video) cause effects on a relationship in time and space. The narrative shapes this material in terms of time and space, such as where and when things take place. This can be portrayed by using effects to show the time and space: for example, flashbacks, forwarding time, slow motion and speeding up. There might be titles used, such as in 'The Shining', to show which day it is during flashbacks or flashforwards, connoting the importance of time in the narrative.
Bordwell and Thompson in their book Film Art, An Introduction (tenth edition, 2013) discuss the role of editing in creating temporal (time) and spatial (space) meaning. They also discuss how the way a scene is edited gives it rhythm and visual, or graphic meaning. Rhythm is important in a chase scene such as the one previously described because the rhythm of the editing needs to match the emotion of the scene. Put simply, the pace of the cars and the frantic nature of car chases is communicated almost as much through the temporal, spatial and rhythmic considerations in the editing as through the performance of the actors and the mix of the roaring engines and screeching tyres in the diegetic sound and the fast paced, upbeat music in the non-diegetic sound.
Robert McKee’s lesser known Classic Five Part Narrative Theory, extensively discussed by Joe Nicholas and John Price in their book “Advanced Studies in Media” (1998) may be more appropriate since it allows for the progressive accumulation of events which inspire the protagonist to act. The theory suggests the first stage of the narrative is the inciting incident, followed by progressive complications, then a crisis, a climax and then finally resolution with the rather predictable happy ever after ending.
ROLAND BARTHES: FIVE CODES
Roland Barthes describes a text as
"a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (1974 translation)
What he is saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter an absolute plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread if you like, and create an entirely different meaning. And so on. An infinite number of times. If you wanted to.
Barthes wanted to - he was a semiotics professor in the 1950s and 1960s who got paid to spend all day unravelling little bits of texts and then writing about the process of doing so. All you need to know, again, very basically, is that texts may be ´open´ (ie unravelled in a lot of different ways) or ´closed´ (there is only one obvious thread to pull on). (MediaKnowall site)
Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative codes and that they could be categorised in the following five ways:
Barthes - semiotics, enigma codes, 'steak and chips'
Barthes, a French media theorist writing from 1950s to 1970s, developed the theory of semiotics - where any text is a complex bundle of meaning which can be unravelled to create a whole range of different meanings. These threads are called narrative codes. Texts that can be read in a number of ways are polysemic texts. The handiest code to refer to in essays is the enigma code - found in all successful texts from 'Bob the Builder' to 'CSI'. These codes are constructed to attract and hold the attention of the audience, usually be creating a mystery or puzzle which the audience want to see solved - why has this man been murdered?
See Barthes' article 'Steak and Chips' on p62 of his book, 'Mythologies': https://soundenvironments.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/roland-barthes-mythologies.pdf
VLADIMIR PROPP ( Morphology of the Folktale, 1927) narratemes explained here
In Propp's theory of character function, characters and events can be seen as constructs to drive the narrative. Propp set up a list of character types with clear functions: the hero, villain, donor (who gives the hero some magical key or information), helper (assists the hero on the quest), heroine (used by the villain and a reward for the hero). See all Disney Princess films, Star Wars, The Lord of the RingsVladimir Propp’s theory was formed in the early twentieth Century. He studied Russian fairytales and discovered that in stories there were always 8 types of characters evident. These are: the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess and her father. He did not state these characters were all separate people e.g. the provider could also be the helper. There are only 8 different character types and only 31 things they ever do (character functions). Once you have identified the character type (e.g., the hero) it’s easy to guess what they will do (save the maiden, defeat the villain, marry the maiden or whatever) because each character has a SPHERE OF ACTION. This easily relates to films and programmes today.
(see here for The Hero's Journey which is an outstanding explanation of Campbell's ideas)
TZEVESTAN TODOROV
Todorov's theory of equilibrium - basically, the pattern where many narratives begin with a state of equilibrium, which is then disrupted by an event, forcing characters to face up to the disruption in order to reclaim equilibrium.
This approach suggests narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium.
Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. He stated that films and programmes begin with an equilibrium, a calm period. Then agents of disruption cause disequilibrium, a period of unsettlement and disquiet. This is then followed by a renewed state of peace and harmony for the protagonists and a new equilibrium brings the chaos to an end. The simplest form of narrative (sometimes referred to as ‘Classic’ or ‘Hollywood’ narrative).(Source: ESMedia)
Media Language
At A2, I made the promotional package for a new film called 2020. This was comprised of three separate entities, a film trailer, a magazine cover and a film poster. My film trailer for 2020 introduced the drama of a post-apocalyptic disaster world in which a teenage survivor thinks he is alone in a ruined world which he explores with growing trepidation and terror until he finds another survivor to reconnect with humanity with. The audience is introduced via scenes of international war with leaders launching missiles. Our mise-en-scene needed verisimilitude to make this convincing so sets included a series of abandoned structures such as houses, warehouses and disused school buildings as well as a vast open camouflaged terrain which soldiers crawled and fought in. Trailers, as a genre, have a set of conventions such as ellipsis, motivated edits and fast paced editing with hard cuts (which I will discuss when I write about editing); focus on the protagonists (to establish key players for audiences who need to pick up very quickly the bare bones of the narrative); tracking shots to link narrative sequences; emotive sound that establishes mood and anchors visuals; text that offers key information (release dates, stars, director, institutional information, 'puffs') and overall should generate a sense of anticipation, drama and excitement.
Our production is part of a promotional package that includes a film poster and film magazine cover, both of which have their own visual language and sets of print conventions regarding layout, framing, typography, colour choices, font sizes, 'house' style (for magazines), bar codes, dates and prices, QR code, billing block (posters), social media and website links (posters). The one over-arching, most important part of this media 'language', however, is that the promo pack as a whole delivers a cohesive, integrated visual package that creates a visual synergy in making the production (the film) memorable.
Editing
The motivation behind our editing process was to increase the tempo and in turn isight interest from the audience viewing it. Our inter-titles function as cues to guide the audience through the narrative. These inter-titles synergise nicely with our sound track which we used adding tempo and direction in our trailer. We added suspense in the inter-titles by using phrases such as 'We fight' and 'For our home'
Camera Work
- Camera movement
- Camera angle
- Shot type
All of our camerawork (by which I mean camera movements, camera angles and shot types) was designed to serve the overall aim of the production, which is to generate intense interest in the trailer as a means of persuading audiences to see the film itself.
Sound
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