Narrative

The Story

Stories and fantasy are a necessity to humans. Since childhood we have had stories told to us, each with their own meanings that we do not quite understand at the time. These are parables and tales that are used in Religion and philosophy. The Judeo-Christian Bibile and Torah have loads of tales in them. So how many different forms can you think of that have narrative?

• Plays
• Paintings
• Television
• Newspapers (What's the story?)
• Comics
• Dance
• Films
• Drunken Stories

Documentaries and Avant-guarde also employ narrative, but not all of the time. 

All enigmas in a story must be solved by the end of the film, this is a classic rule. Even objects of interest must follow the tie up stage. All conflicts will be resolved (unless it's a computer game where the conflict always continues.) The goals that set out in the film are always accomplished or the opposite. The ending may satisfy or cheat the audience, who, have come to make sense of the film's clues, recollections, anticipations and characters etc. "The Sixth Sense" had a damn good twist, so much so that people went to see it again to figure out how their anticipations were twisted.

Narrative Form

A chain of events that are linked somehow you could say; causality, time and space.

Okay, here's an example of a chain of events that make no sense; a wedding ring is throw into a river, a man injects heroin into himself, a car runs into someone. Is there a narrative? Not yet. Alright, so here it is with narrative; A man gets divorced because of an affair, he throws his ring into a river, the man decides that heroin is the only way out of his depression, he cooks up down a skag ally, he then goes wild with the feeling that love can be replaced with something more interesting, then in his wild frenzy, he gets run over by a car.

From this, we can link the events together over a period of time. Also, we can see a cause and effect. The affair causes the ring to fly away and the man to die/get seriously injured. This resolves the conflict the man has with his ex-wife as he is probably dead, "Death solves everything" (Stalin, I think.) We now also have a way of distinguishing between different places that are in the story. So, it is causality, space and time that are essential to narrative as now audiences can make sense of the information.

Parallels are often used as a asset to narrative. We draw parallels between characters in stories. Here there are no boundaries that need to be followed, space and time can be completely different. An example would be the three male protagonists in "The Fountain." Each of them is separated by all in all 1000 years, yet they have the same fundamental goals, to live forever and to save his loved one. The way that we distinguish between these worlds is through the characters appearance; Tommy's hair style changes from a lot of hair (including the face) to no facial hair and then finally to no hair at all.

In some documentaries that cover different people who come from different backgrounds, we see people who are not connected anyway causally, but we make parallels between them. An example would be two mothers having their daily lives analyzed who come from completely different economic backgrounds. Drawing parallels between them like, they do washing up only that the rich one has a dishwasher, they cook food with great contrast. This is total would portray an imbalance in quality of life just from drawing parallels between the two mothers, hence the message, we need to become more socialist.

Story

There is connection linking all of the stories we hear of though. It was a Russian named Vladamir Popp that investigated the typicallities of story telling. This is a Structuralist approach. Vladamir wrote a book all about it.

So, what do all stories have in common?

There is an

• Equilibrium - Balance, status quo
• Disruption - An adversary is introduced, a goal is set, there could be a love triangle.
• Restoration - Order is finally realigned

LOTR is based entirely on folk tales from all sorts of times and cultures. "Gandalf" means wizard in Old Norse. Frodo is an active male on a quest, there are adversaries all over the place trying to get his ring off him. "Lord of the Keys" could have had the same story line, only the object has changed. But all the same, there once was an equilibrium at one point that gets restored, unlike, Soap Operas where we stay in the middle of the story for fecking ages, too much of that. The final goals are never achieved.

There are three acts to a film; a Beginning, a Middle and an end. These can be Linear or mixed up. "The Fountain" directed by Darren Aronofsky has a beginning, a middle and an end, only completely mixed up. Not only that but the story spans 1000 years. Another film that defies the linear story is "Pulp Fiction."

Most of the time a film will be linear as this is the easiest way to understand a film. "Double Indemnity" starts at the end of the film, a then into a flashback.

Hitchcock, the master, used Red Herrings like "Scooby Doo" does consistently, but he also used a more extreme version of this and that was the "MacGuffin." "Psycho" is a MacGuffin. Hitchcock was vilified for killing his main character off within the first 40 minutes of the film.

The story is always chronological, the Plot, is not.

Plot

How is it actually told on screen? James Bond films, are always set in exotic locations. But do we ever see him go through airport security checks? Nuh-uh, this would probably be the entire film, that would be excruciatingly painful to sit through. This is where the plot comes in, to compress everything into a shorted space.

Unrestricted and Restricted Narration

Unrestricted = access to the whole story such as "End of Days," we see the Devil at the beginning, the characters then have to find out who the Devil is even though the audience all know exactly who he is. Rope has this as well as we know the main characters have killed someone when that's the whole point of the film, is to try and find out if they really have killed him.

Restricted Narration = Our knowledge is limited. We know as much as the principle character in the film.

Explicit Narration = Titles quickly giving us information and/or a narrator giving the audience information.

Non-explicit Narration = In most cases, the narration is hidden (there is no narrator) instead of having a narrator stating "Oh in this scene we have Alex meeting Jim for the first time, they really like each other and Jim kills Alex accidently."

The 4 types of Alternative Narrative

1. Categorical : This divide a subject into parts such as the educational video or the "how they make things" Documentary etc.
2. Rhetorical : Adverts are rhetoric as they address the argument that their product is the best. They are far more subtle though compared to Propaganda films that are also rhetoric.
3. Associational : This creates associations / parallels between one thing and the next. Montage, connections, juxtapositions are all key words. Eisenstein's intellectual Montage is also associational.
4. Abstract : Non-Representational visual or audio qualities stressing elements like shape, colour and rhythm. (Oskar Fischinger films such as Allegretto, 1936)