Research- Narrative Theory- Miss Begum

what is a narrative and why is important?

A narrative is a storyline that is used and followed throughout a film. A narrative is everything that happens in the films it is there to create more meaning towards the audience, a narrative should be easy to follow by the audience and shouldn't be confusing unless its deliberate.

Creating meaning in text

1. The connotation and denotation help create meaning it allows the audience to give true meaning of a scene, object or emotion towards the viewers.
2. Genre  shows how conventional it is and what makes it conventional genre-wise.
3. The structure would allows the audience to understand the whole film from the start, middle and end without getting confused in the middle.
4. The characters allow to give the audience meaning of the narrative and have more understanding.

who was Propp?

 

Propp is a theorist that came up with an idea of creating a film with a narrative that was determined by the characters he believe that folk tales were about the same basic struggles therefore had the same characters.

 

Propp characters:

•  The hero
•  The villain
•  The donor
• The dispatcher
• The false hero
• The helper
•  The princess
• Her father (the king)

 

Who is Todorov?

 

 Todorov is another theorist that came up with an idea of creating a film with a narrative that have a clear structure of a start, middle and end which he named equilibrium ( how the characters are stable at the beginning) , disequilibrium ( something bad happens then a change happens which needs to be cured)  and new equilibrium. ( the change gets solved and the narrative is closed)

 

 

 

 

  Who is Aristotle?

 

Aristotle is another theorist that like Tovodo came up with the idea that a narrative should have the beginning, middle and ending, he also believed that all the events should somehow relate to eachother. He also believed that it was important to get emotion from the audience.

 

 Who was Barthes?

Barthes is also a  theorist that came up with an idea of narrative that can be explained by using these 5 things ...

1. Action - understanding and resolution.

2. Enigma - it presents a problem or dilemma to the audience that needs to be solved

3. Symbolic - connotation

4. Semic - denotation

5. cultural understanding - events that happen that people recognise as being part of a culture

 

 

I believe that Thrillers tend to take Torovs theory because it has a clear equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium. This is Important because it helps the audience to understand clearly what is going on and follow the narrative without getting confused

 

 

Conclusion

 

All the research above has helped me understand clearly about Narratives and the Theorists view on what a narrative should look like. In my film I will use the narrative of Todorov as its clear and will keep my viewers engaged with the film.