Narrtive Notes

Narrative

The way that a story is told to convey certain emotions as well as representing characters.

Roland Barthes

Concluded that a text has many meaning, like a galaxy of signifiers. It’s like a ball of thread, you can pull the obvious one (closed meaning) or several (open meaning).

The action code- he defined several types of narrative codes, the most relevant being action and enigma codes.

The action codes allow audiences to interpret and identify what is to come.

The enigma code

Is created by the whole who died, how was he/she murdered by whom? This is the driving force of the narrative to create tension and satisfies the audience.

Combined with action codes it drives the plot forward.

Claude Levi Strauss- binary opposition

Good vs evil, man vs machine, man vs woman

There should be an obvious divide between good and evil. They offer levels of meaning within a text and can summarise a theme of a film. He highlights that several oppositions can be present in a media text.

Binary pairs are never equal.

The Vladimir Propp Tedious Link

A Russian theorist who studied fairy tales and folklore. He identified plot elements and developed this into 8 spheres of action narrative theory.

· Villain

· Hero (seeking something)

· Donor (provides an object with magic properties)

· Helper (side kick)

· Princess/ prince/reward

· Father (rewards hero)

· Dispatcher (sent the hero on his/her way)

· False hero

Todorov’s Equilibrium

· A state of equilibrium

· A disruption of that order by an event

· A recognition that disorder has occurred

· An attempt to repair the damage of disorder

· A return or restoration of new equilibrium

This is a circular narrative.

· Which means a story can start at any part of the narrative.

· The process does involve some transformation.

· Some genres can have multiple disruptions.

 

Time in narrative

       · Stories are rarely told in real time.

· Sequences are then carefully edited and put together in a structure that makes sense to the viewer.

· This process is called casualty, where one thing leads to another. This process forms a pattern known as the plot.

 

Syd Field- 3 act plot structure
· Hollywood screenwriter who believes that a typical film can be split into 3 sections. Set up, confrontation and resolution.

      · To move the action on from one act to another, key plot point occur which in turn around the lives of the main characters.

      · Field says that an audience will decide whether or not they like the film in the first 1o minutes, they will normally be unwilling to change their mind after that time.