Reasearch: Narrative Theory - MS B

Narrative Theory

What is narrative and why is it important to audience?


A narrative is the outline of a film from start to end, what stages happen in different times of the film. The narrative is important to the audience as it is the genre of a theme category of a film, such as action, horror, The lighting of a film, The sound effects used within the film.

Creating meaning in texts:

The four elements that creates meaning for the audience includes:

• Genre: Genre films are those made with the clear purpose of fitting the would of a specific genre, such as horror films, and crime. Typically this is a way of ensuring that the resulting film appeals to the fans of that one particular genre. In practice this means that certain identifiable features associated the given genre will be included, perhaps sometimes at the expense of other elements. 

• Characters: The representation of the characters is important as it creates meaning through factors such as physique, gender, age, costume and their relationships with other characters. These factors allow the audience to develop first impressions and understand the characters position within the film, without the characters the film would have no particular meaning as the storyline would not make sense.

• Structure: This means putting all the elements together into one cohesive whole. structuring the story, pacing the film, taking scenes out that don't work, adding sound effects/refining sound effects, colour correction of the film especially if its not consistent.

• Connotation and Denotation: Connotation and Denotation allows the audience to connect with the film with the use of themes, MES (Costume, hair up, facial expression and body language) and iconography used.

Propp - Film as Fairy tale

Sherk analyses: Propp was mainly interested in narrative folk tales.
His belief was that fol tales had the same structure so that meant it has the same characters.

Character type	Role or Function
Hero	Undertakes a journey or a quest
Villain	Will attempt to thwart or kill the hero
Donor	Gives the task to the hero
Helper	Is a friend who helps the hero to complete their quest
Princess /Her father	Provides the hero with an object or reward to aid them in their quest
Dispatcher	A character who sends the hero on their quest
False Hero	Takes the credit for the hero’s actions

Todorov:

 Todorov suggested that conventional narratives are structured in five stages:

1. a state of equilibrium at the outset; 
2. a disruption of the equilibrium by some action; 
3. a recognition that there has been a disruption; 
4. an attempt to repair the disruption; 
5. a reinstatement of equilibrium or a new equilibrium created. 
   
   
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Aristotle: The importance of the Plot:

• It is important to arouse emotion from the audience.
• Evoking emotions though themes. 

Barthes:

A narrative could be defined by using the following things: 

1. Symbolic - Connotation 
2. Semic - Denotation 

Conclusion

In my own thriller clip i would use 'Todorov' as it has a clear setting of the narrative.
So i will start with Equilibrium as i will illustrate my characters to my audience then i will have a disturbing problem that needs to be solved, this is called Middle Disequilibrium. And finally the End New Equilibrium this is when every the problem is sorted and the narrative is closed