Narrative structure is a key element of genre, as it is essential to the experience of viewing and reading of the text. Narrative is like story-telling, it enables the audience to submerge themselves within the narrative, it will have a beginning, middle and an end but will reflect life itself. As humans we need a beginning, middle and end as we connect all the events together to develop and understanding of the text. Narratives particulary use time within the films due to the fact that a whole life has to be shown in about 90minutes, slow motion shots will slow done time and flash forwards will speed up time. Therefore we consider "the time of the thing told and the time of the telling." (Christian Metz Notes Towards A Phenomenology of Narrative).
Narrative provides a structure that can be followed through many of the genreic Hollywood films. 'Todorov - suggests narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium' he proposed the balance from imbalance journey finally ending in the re-stored balance. Volger developed this idea into his '12 Steps to a Hero's Journey' this is very similar to Todorov equilibrium and disequilibrium but in greater detail. Their points about narrative have found that any Hollywood film will have the same narrative and we recieve pleasure from decoding them.
In class we looked at some short films, and studied the narrative, with one film we tried to test whether Volger and Todorov were right by apply Barthes 5 action codes to the film 'Pop Art'. We found that the narrative of the film did fit in and included a hermeneutic code we concluded that why is he a blow up boy was the code, proairetic code was the pin falling on the blow up boys chair, semantice code what the blow up boy was representing,symbolic code was someone who is different and the cultural code was Bulling and Child deprevation . From watching other short films it has appeared that they do not follow the conventual 'Hollywood narrative' for instance 'Tender'
'Tender' the short film by Deborah Haywood was about a boy who came from a disfunctional family, his mother is young and poor and has a violent boyfriend. The film does not appear to start with equilbrium he is shown as walking alone scrapping a stick along some railings. The film ends on a ambigious ending it does not have a restored equlibrium. From this film you do not gain pleasure from decoding the narrative like Hollywood films instead it has more of an affect on you as you a presented with a social situation that you may not neccesarily be able to relate to.
The third film is 'Jade' by Daniel Elliot, the film opens with her swimming giving the audience no insight into what the short film is about, enigma is constructed immediately. The second scene reveals she is pregnant. Throughtout the film her troubles start to unfold we find out she is pregnant but are presented with two possible fathers one being a 50 year old man and the other a young boy, the narrative is unclear and the reader can make their own interpretations although there may well be a prefered meaning. The film also has no narrative resolution her troubles are un-resolved but we have gained empathy for her. This film does not have a generic narrative, it is a realist narrative of real life events and the events happen chronologically the narrative is within time which is un-popular.
From watching short films and considering narrative narrative I have come to the conclusion that it isn't unsual to break away from the generic 'Hollywood' narrative structure, many of the structures are unclear and events happen consecutively or in a non linear way. From my research I have decided that when making the short film, I want to have all events happening consecutively and to have a social problem, I also want to have less structure to the narrative in terms of the traditional Hollywood narrative moving from equilibrium etc. I have found that when a film has an unexpected ending which is ambigious it leaves the audience asking questions, I believe it has a greater effect and a happy ending is not my aim at this satge.
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