Narrative Essay
By definition, a narrative is: a spoken or written account of connected events; a story. A narrative should be clear, easy to follow and full of enigma codes in order to keep the audience interested.
In Year 12, we successfully used and understood the concept of narrative with our original film opening, Panophobia.
Right from the start I knew I had clear ideas and themes in my head of identity, friendship and someone going missing. This tied in very well to our genre of "teen-drama", and allowed me and my group to create something audiences could both question and relate to.
Our film opening was shot in a montage style, which cut between shots of our three characters messing around and doing everyday teen activities such as going to the arcade or running around school and short clips of photos of the girls being set alight. This let the audience know that our film opening was not as simple as an indie teen film, and had more complications and twists than one would think.
During this production, we studied the work of Todorov, Strauss, Barthes and Propp, who all present theories about media conventions and in particular, the conventions of genre.
We specifically focused on Strauss, who theorises that media works should contain binary opposite characters - good vs evil, rich vs poor etc. Strauss believed that these binary opposites helped to thicken the plot, further the narrative and introduce contrast to the characters.
We implemented this throughout our work with the main character (who goes missing) shown to be of a more evil disposition than the other girls, who are pleading for her to come home while she burns photos of them together.
Additionally, the aesthetic of the shots of happy, smiling friends juxtaposes the photos of them being burnt, which was also helped by editing the friendly shots to appear warmer in colour, and the shots of the flames having cold, blue undertones. This was a subtle change but made the difference between scenes and shots extremely clear.
While we used Todorov's theory of there being an equilibrium, we decided to challenge this in order to make our film's narrative feel more unique - we started our opening with a troubled narration, accompanied by a shot of the title burning into frame. This then lead into the happy,smiling montage of all three friends laughing together, then back into a scene of a photo burning. We essentially flipped Todorov's theory on its head, which dictates that everything should start with a balanced equilibrium, which is then disrupted, and then by the end of the film the equilibrium is restored again.
I am happy with this choice, as it made our narrative as mysterious and engaging as intended it to be.
Propp is another theorist we took inspiration from, but eventually decided to challenge - Propp's theory of stock characters dictates that every production should contain a hero, a villain and a damsel in distress. While our production does show two "heroes", the girls looking for their friend, it is left to the audience to question whether the girl who goes missing is the villain or the damsel in distress, or even both. While she is missing, she is also shown setting photos of her friends alight, which hints at there being more to the narrative than inititally meets the eye.
I believe that my understanding of narrative and my usage of it throughout this production has helped greatly in allowing me to achieve my goals of challenging and conforming to ideas presented by theorists. Narrative is important in conveying to the audience a clear storyline, and if used correctly, can keep an audience guessing and interested in the production you create.
In Year 12, we successfully used and understood the concept of narrative with our original film opening, Panophobia.
Right from the start I knew I had clear ideas and themes in my head of identity, friendship and someone going missing. This tied in very well to our genre of "teen-drama", and allowed me and my group to create something audiences could both question and relate to.
Our film opening was shot in a montage style, which cut between shots of our three characters messing around and doing everyday teen activities such as going to the arcade or running around school and short clips of photos of the girls being set alight. This let the audience know that our film opening was not as simple as an indie teen film, and had more complications and twists than one would think.
During this production, we studied the work of Todorov, Strauss, Barthes and Propp, who all present theories about media conventions and in particular, the conventions of genre.
We specifically focused on Strauss, who theorises that media works should contain binary opposite characters - good vs evil, rich vs poor etc. Strauss believed that these binary opposites helped to thicken the plot, further the narrative and introduce contrast to the characters.
We implemented this throughout our work with the main character (who goes missing) shown to be of a more evil disposition than the other girls, who are pleading for her to come home while she burns photos of them together.
Additionally, the aesthetic of the shots of happy, smiling friends juxtaposes the photos of them being burnt, which was also helped by editing the friendly shots to appear warmer in colour, and the shots of the flames having cold, blue undertones. This was a subtle change but made the difference between scenes and shots extremely clear.
While we used Todorov's theory of there being an equilibrium, we decided to challenge this in order to make our film's narrative feel more unique - we started our opening with a troubled narration, accompanied by a shot of the title burning into frame. This then lead into the happy,smiling montage of all three friends laughing together, then back into a scene of a photo burning. We essentially flipped Todorov's theory on its head, which dictates that everything should start with a balanced equilibrium, which is then disrupted, and then by the end of the film the equilibrium is restored again.
I am happy with this choice, as it made our narrative as mysterious and engaging as intended it to be.
Propp is another theorist we took inspiration from, but eventually decided to challenge - Propp's theory of stock characters dictates that every production should contain a hero, a villain and a damsel in distress. While our production does show two "heroes", the girls looking for their friend, it is left to the audience to question whether the girl who goes missing is the villain or the damsel in distress, or even both. While she is missing, she is also shown setting photos of her friends alight, which hints at there being more to the narrative than inititally meets the eye.
I believe that my understanding of narrative and my usage of it throughout this production has helped greatly in allowing me to achieve my goals of challenging and conforming to ideas presented by theorists. Narrative is important in conveying to the audience a clear storyline, and if used correctly, can keep an audience guessing and interested in the production you create.
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