Narrative

Narrative theory helps us to understand how texts work, and it gets us thinking about the choices that the author has made. After all, there's always more than one way of telling a story. It's by taking a look at narrative that we can get a handle on how the story is told—and that makes it possible for us to weigh in on what the story is all about and come up with our own opinions and interpretations based on that.

According to narrative theory, "story" refers to all the building blocks you start out with: you've got a bunch of events, people, and places. The thing is, you can put this stuff together in all kinds of different ways. There's where "narrative" steps in: it's how you weave the story material together and give it shape. Narrative is about organizing the story material and making choices about how to put it together. When a writer writes a book, for example, there are all sorts of ways they can choose to tell the story. An example is the "happily ever after" Disney-style narratives but, as you'll see, there's a vast amount of different forms that narratives can take. Not all narratives follow the usual beginning → middle → end template. Writers can choose any way they want to take the script / story, but the ones with the most unusual narrative are usually the most successful.

Proposed by Vladimir Propp, he analysed over 100 Russian fairy tales in 1920, he clarified that it was possible to classify the characters and their actions into clearly defined roles and functions. He found 8 character roles and 31 functions that move the story along. The 8 character roles can also be types of action because they are not the sort of roles which appear in the cast list. One character in the film or play can occupy several of his character roles or types of action. They are:

The villain
The hero (not always good but always carries the story along, the central character and not always male)
The donor (who provides an object with some special property)
The helper (who helps the hero)
The princess (the reward for the hero and object of the villain’s schemes)
Her father (who rewards the hero)
The dispatcher (who sends the hero on his way)
The false hero

The 31 functions include events such as: The hero is prohibited from doing something, the villain learns something about the victim, the villain is punished, etc. However, this may not work for all films, for example we live in a much more equal society than 1920, feminism is more credited and not all films sensor around heroes and princesses (for example, the award winning thriller ‘Before I go to sleep’ has been made in the last 10 years yet it does not follow Propps narrative line)

Roland Barthes- Barthes was interested in concepts such as negotiated meaning between institution and audience, he argued that the reader produces new meanings when reading a text making use of previous experiences as well as the text itself. A modern example is the Harry Potter series wrote by JK Rowling, one of the world’s leading book and film franchises. The books have been interpreted differently and readers have different ideas of what means what, this has led to them creating ‘fandoms’ and ‘fan-fiction’ where they expand on their idea of the point. Barthes described texts as networks which relates closely to current multimedia texts such as websites and the different ways in which a web reader interacts with the non-linear text.

Barthes most well know code is the enigma code, it is the hook or mystery to be resolved for the audience, e.g. in TV Programmes like ‘Pretty Little Liars’ they often leave episodes on a hook / mystery, making watchers go back the next week to discover the mystery, this also appears in film trailers to make people go to cinemas.

Barthes theory of narrative

Tzvetan Todorov suggests that there are five main stages to a narrative –

Equilibrium
A disruption of this equilibrium by an event
A realisation that a disruption has happened
An attempt to repair the damage of this disruption
A restoration of equilibrium – which may be a new equilibrium

This structure has been applied to fictional and non-fictional texts and is a good starting point for identifying the structure of a text – this is how many new stories develop, and is a clear structure for most Disney films.

Take Sleeping Beauty for example;

Equilibrium – A baby is born
A disruption – The curse & witch
Fairies strategizing and the king begging for forgiveness
Baby being sent to live in the forest & Prince saving kingdom
Restoration- kingdom is saved, couple dance and prepare for marriage.

This is a classic example of Todorovs theory, however it is a historic film and over time techniques may have changed. This, however, is not the case with Twilight films,

Todorovs theory of narrative

Narrative & Film

“Film is a visual medium”. “Show, don’t tell.”

“Film is about telling stories in pictures, which is the most economical way of telling a story – and when you make a short film, economy is everything. Create visual backstories for your characters. Externalize through visual images their temperament, their profession, their status, etc.” - http://www.raindance.org/7-rules-for-writing-short-films/

Where both me and my partner both agree with this statement, we also believe that where we have a limited amount of time it is best not to have a lot of back story and to focus on the present, as we may get side tracked and confused the audience.

I did a short powerpoint presentation on short films with good narrative, where I found most my research from IMDB looking at reviews after watching the film.

Propps theory of narrative

Why did I research into narrative?

I wanted to research into short films with good and bad narratives as at first the thought of having to construct a whole story in 5 minutes seemed really daunting to me and I wanted to look at some examples as to how narrative can be good and how it can be bad. What i learnt from research into this is that my narrative should be interesting but at the same time I need to remember to not confused my audience and make sure they that the audience knows what is going on throughout my short film.

I looked at narrative theories because I wanted to get a clear understanding of what options I had and how to structure them. Personally, I like Todorovs theory the best and believe I would use his idea when doing my story and narrative.