Narrative

Narrative is the way that the story/plot is told.  For example, is the narrative told in first person or are we shown it through a character's flashbacks?

Here are three narrative theories that form the base of a film; how it develops, how it looks/sounds and what the purpose of the characters are.

 

Todorov:

Todorov produced a theory that could be applied to all films and describing how they work and their basic narrative. His theory suggests that all films start with an equilibrium, where everything is normal and good, and then there is a disequilibrium where something bad happens. After this is resolved there is then a new equilibrium and everything is back to normal again.

 

Barthes:

Barthes designed the three codes on which films are based. These three codes cover all aspects of a film; they are:

1. technical - the camera angles, length of shot, sound and editing
2. verbal - the dialogue and what people say
3. symbolic - this is the denotations and connotations of the mise-en-scene (the things in the scene). For example, red roses signify romance

Propp:

Propp created the theory that certain types of character have a specific influence on the narrative

 

 

Levi-Strauss:

This narrative theory states that we see world, people and places by forming binary oppositions, meaning that all narrative are based around the idea of conflict between two opposites.

• good vs bad
• men vs women
• light vs dark
• technology vs nature
• democracy vs dictatorship

 

The most commonly used method of showing narrative in a music video is to have half of the video being a meaningful story, and the other half being live recorded or lip synced band performance. Other videos however, like the video for 'Lonesome Rider' by alternative rock band 'Volbeat' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WdO9KhcUKE) can be full narrative with no band performance. If we choose to make a music video, we think that this would be our choice.

Ideas for final video!

Out of the three options available (Music video, children's TV show, or short film), we have decided to choose either short film or music video. This was chosen because making music videos is new to us, so we will enjoy the experience more than doing another film, however if we do not think that the music video will work, then we will choose short film. We also enjoyed doing the preliminary task, which helped to prompt our decision.

I will be working with Dan Saker, Luke Bates, and Becca Stimpson. We will all have many different qualities and skills to bring to the video including:
Dan:
Director of the video, planning of shots and angles
Luke:
Editing, musical editing and mixing, filming
Becca:
Filming, planning, and writing
Me:
The arty stuff, posters, album cover, costume, setting, mise-en-scene
Working in a group of 4 may be difficult to co-ordinate our plans and agree on ideas but we believe that it will ultimately make our outcome a much better quality.

For this task, our main aim is to create a believable, successful outcome. We think that an outcome of this quality will include:

• a detailed planning process
• attention to detail with filming (preventing continuity)
• music that suits the video
• planning and storyboarding of the shots
• well stitched editing
• an original story/idea

Our next step is to plan out ideas for our video, and to choose a song.

Genre research: Comedy

Comedy is well known for being one of the most difficult genres to successfully create, this is because it is subjective, and if you do not appeal to a large audience then the comedy factor is not shown and the film can become awkward to watch. However, if done correctly, comedy can be the best genre, and it is the easiest way to captivate an audience. The conventions of a comedy include:

• Relatable content (setting, characters, scenarios etc.).
• Often a bright setting, not low lighting, cities and towns, mid shots.
• Editing adds comedy, length of shot & sound effects.
• Typical characters include low and high intelligence characters working together, or two of the same intelligence put into a scenario of the opposing intelligence.
• Often, they will stick to a particular sub genre of comedy, including slapstick, romantic comedy, and parody comedy. 

One of my favourite comedies is 'Airplane' (1980). This film is comedy at its finest. Throughout the film, we get many small funny ongoing gags such as Ted Striker (played by Robert Hays) and his 'drinking problem' (shown below). As well as this, there are also many small one off humorous moments such as when a young boy asks a girl if she would like a drink and she replies with an unexpected and adult comment. Moments like this can sometimes be the difference between a successful and non successful comedy.

Genre research: Mockumentary

Being very similar to the well known genre Documentary, Mockumentary films are a less serious, often non factual, approach to this genre. These films are mostly comedies and their job is purely to entertain an audience. One of my favourite Mockumentaries is 'This is Spinal Tap' (1984). This film features the fictional rock band 'Spinal Tap' and the ups and downs of their career. Some of the features of this film that I believe make it a good mockumentary are:

• Assumptions and expectations of a documentary.
• An authoritative voiceover (like in a documentary).
• 'Real' footage, video camera style may be used.
• Interviews with characters.
• Non-diegetic sound, sometimes for transitioning between scenes.
• Feel good nature, happy ending.
• Still images and close ups.

It is very obvious from studying the conventions of a Mockumentary, that they are very similar to that of a Documentary. Therefore, many filmmakers would be obliged to use these conventions in order to create a successful film in the mockumentary genre. An idea that I had was to mimic a wildlife documentary but from the perspective of the animals. There would be an animal such as a lion as the presenter and they would walk around a safari park, narrating the lives of the tourists. This idea would suit a mockumentary because it would have a comical theme, a good narrator, real footage, and could easily use similar filming and editing techniques to what would be required.

Genre research: Horror

A typical horror film usually features a group of teenagers or a family with young children that either become involved in the murderous games of a psychopathic serial killer or they are terrorized by a supernatural presence. Horror films are usually set in abandoned or isolated locations that can be known for having a bad past. For example: a warehouse; a forest or an abandoned house are stereotypical settings for a conventional horror film.

A professionally made horror short film - textual analysis

  

In this short film a man is finishing his day at work and getting ready to go home. He then receives an email titled 'goodbye', to which a video is attached. He clicks on the email and starts to download the attached file. He opens the attachment to find a video of an anxious woman sitting at a desk in a dark room, filming herself on what appears to be a computer webcam. In the video the woman is talking, whilst in the background of the video we can see a dark-clothed figure walking towards her from the back of the room. The video continues as the dark figure moves closer, and the shot changes to the man, as we see a white clothed woman appear behind the man...

In general I like this video because the idea is cool, although I did see many similar videos while searching for horror short films. There is, in particular, one shot that I do like which is the shot where we see the man put the cup in the coffee machine and the camera changes to a shot from behind the cup. I think that this is a cool shot because its unique and gives a different perspective of what's happening in the scene. If possible I would like to use a shot like this for my coursework because I really like it and it's different.

If we were to create a piece of coursework in this genre then we would most likely make a short film. A possible idea would be to do a continuation of Becca's AS coursework; revealing what happens to the girl after she has been kidnapped. With this we may use the idea of flashbacks to show what the girl was previously up to the day or two before. This would mainly be scenes of her socialising with friends and having fun. These flashbacks would then be cut with shots of her in a dark and empty room. We are not too sure how this film would end without it being too long. Another idea would be to cut shots of her in a dark room with shots of people putting up missing posters/a police investigation into finding her. With this film we would leave it as a cliff hanger so we would see shots of the police walking through a dark corridor trying to find the room that the girl is in; this would be cut with shots of the door from inside the room (girl's point of view), hearing people in the corridor. As the police get closer to the door the cuts between the two shots gets quicker and the music will be more dramatic. There will be no or little dialogue in this scene so music will be used to build tension. The film would end with the police opening the door and revealing only a small part of the dark room, and then cut to black. This would mean that neither the audience or the characters would know if the girl was found or not.

Below is Becca's AS coursework from which this idea would follow from:

Auteur Theory

The auteur theory in film is the theory that, because of the way that a film has been directed (be this by pure randomness or a common style), the director becomes more of an author than the writers of the film or screenplay. Most of the best known directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino are all known as auteurs for this reason. To help develop ideas for my final short film/music video, I will be studying one of my all time favorite auteurs; Edgar Wright. From Scott Pilgrim vs the world, The Cornetto Trilogy, and Spaced, Wright has produced some of the best and most iconic films of the past decade. I will be looking at the work of this great man in much more detail in a video which will be posted on my blog soon.