Narrative

I have done some research in the past into narrative theory, however I don't feel I have enough of an understanding of narrative as a whole and the bare basics of the term. Therefore I feel that this research is critical in producing a short film as the narrative is a key element in creating a media product that has a story line and plot. Hopefully this research will reflect and impact in my understanding and later on during the creation of my short film.

Table of Content

Narrative Analysis

General theories of narrative

Narration, story and plot

Types of narrative code

Open and Closed Narratives

Classic Hollywood Narrative

The Classic Narrative System

Postmodern Narratives

Reflection

• Making narratives, or stories, is a key way in which meanings and pleasures get constructed and organised both in and outside the media.

• Both factual and fiction forms are subject to this kind of shaping. All cultures seem to make stories as an involving and enjoyable way of creating sense and meanings in the world. 

Two points about systematic study of narrative in modern media:

• Narrative theory suggests that stories in whatever media and whatever culture share certain features .

• But particular media are able to 'tell' stories in different ways. It is worth adding that you will hardly ever encounter a story separate from expectations about it, usually those of genre.

Narrative Analysis

General theories of narrative

Narrative theories try to understand the devices and conventions governing how stories (fictional or factual) are organised into sequence, and the invitations these may make to audiences to become involved in various ways, and not others. This suggests that quite ordinary activities are often connected to dominant sets of values.

Of course there are other ways of thinking about the telling and writing of stories. Syd Field’s books argue that all successful screenplays have a similar three-pare structure (Set-Up, Confrontation, Resolution) and try to explore this in Hollywood films. Joseph Campbell is an anthropologist interested in myths, or ancient stories which can be argued to be shared across cultures. He is said by film-makers such as George Lucas to be a key influence on films such as the Star Wars series. The publication of Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) established Joseph Campbell as a comparative mythologist, using a Jungian psychological framework to argue that 'eternal' myths or stories are shared by all cultures. 

Media Studies tries to understand them, especially in terms of their possible social and ideological roles. A good definition of narrative for these purposes is given by Branigan, who argues it is 'a way of organising spatial and temporal data into a cause-effect chain of events with a beginning, a middle and end that embodies a judgement about the nature of events'. Important theorists for this approach include Propp, Barrhes, Todorov and Levi-Strauss, who worked mostly with myths, novels and folk tales to try to understand how narrative shapings and values act within particular cultures. 

Here are the bare bones of these influential structuralist approaches to narrative:

Propp examined hundreds of examples of one kind of folk tale, the 'heroic wonder tale', to see whether they shared any structures. He argued that whatever the surface differences it was possible to group its characters and actions into:

• eight character roles 

• thirty-one functions which move the story along, often in a highly predictable order. For example 'the punishment of the villain' always occurs at the end of a story. What is apparently the same act can function in different ways for different narratives. 

Roles or spheres of action, Propp argued, make sense of the ways in which many very different figures, could be reduced to eight character roles- not the same as the actual characters since one character can occupy several roles or 'spheres of action'. These are:

1. the villain

2. the hero, or character who seeks something

3. the donor, who provides an object with some magic property

4. the helper, who aids the hero

5. the princess, reward for the hero and object of the villain's schemes

6. her father, who rewards the hero

7. the dispatcher, who sends the hero on his way

8. the false hero.

Propp's approach continues to be influential, trying as it did to uncover structures beneath the surface differences of such widely circulated, popular forms. It reminds us that, though characters in stories may seem very 'real', they must be understood as constructed characters. Though played by actors who are cast for their resemblance to how we might imagine the character, they in fact have roles to play for the sake of the story and often get perceived very quickly, by audiences, in these roles -as 'hero', 'villain', 'helper' and so on. 

Todorov argued that all stories begin with an 'equilibrium' where any potentially opposing forces are 'in balance' - the 'once upon a time' moment. This is disrupted by some event, setting in train a series of other events, to close with a second, but different 'equilibrium' or status quo. His theory may sound just like the cliche that every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. But it's more interesting than that. His idea of 'equilibrium' labels a state of affairs, a status quo, and how this is 'set up' in certain ways and not others. 

Barthes suggested that narrative works with five different codes which activate the reader to make sense of it. This is an intricate theory, but particularly interesting is his suggestion that an 'enigma code' works to keep setting up little puzzles to be solved, to delay the story's ending pleasurably: e.g. how will Tom Cruise get out of this predicament? An action code will be read by means of accumulated details (looks, significant words) which relate to our cultural knowledge of what are often highly stereotypical models of such actions as 'falling in love' or 'being tempted into a robbery '. Barthes is important for this early attempt at building the possible involvement of 'readers' and their culturally formed expectations into a model of how narratives 'work' textually.

Levi-Strauss argued that an abiding structure of all meaning-making, not just narratives, was a dependence on binary oppositions, or a conflict between two qualities or terms. Less interested in the order in which events were arranged in the plot (called syntagmatic relations), he looked 'beneath' them for deeper or paradigmatic arrangements of themes. Though this theory can be applied to individual stories and can act as a useful 'way in', strictly speaking it should be applied to sets of narratives, as in the western genre. 

Narration, story and plot

The term narration describes how stories are told, how their material is selected and arranged in order to achieve particular effects with their audiences.

Plot and story are key terms here though a useful distinction is the one used by Russian theorists in the 1920s between syuzbet and fabula, used instead of plot and story. Bordwell and Thompson usefully define story as consisting of 'all the events in a narrative, both explicitly presented and inferred'. The plot, on the other hand, is 'everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us; in other words chose highly selected parts of the story which the narrative puts before us' . 

Another part of the construction of narratives involves the 'voice' telling the story. A first-person narration will use ‘I’ as the voice of the teller, and should not give the reader access to events which that ‘I’ could not have witnessed, or known of. A third-person or impersonal narration however refers to a story which seems to 'get itself told', as in 'Once upon a time there was a prince ... '. Though cinema and many television or video narratives begin with a literal 'voice over' telling us the story from a personal point of view, they usually settle into the mode of impersonal narration, voiceless, and just seeming to unfold before us. 

These broad structures, which seem to govern all story-making and storytelling, have to work differently in different media, and for different cultures. These differences are partly due to the nature of different media and technologies.

Types of narrative code

Stories are combinations of characters, action, settings, atmosphere, imagery and themes. Each of these aspects of story has a life of its own. In semiotic terms, they are sets of meanings with their own conventions and sets of possible combinations. In other words they work as codes. Here are three types of narrative code:

1. A code of 'dimensions', which includes setting, time, imagery and atmosphere.

2. A code of action and change, which includes plot, sub-plot and turning points in plot.

3. A code of character.

A code of dimensions

Settings, imagery and atmosphere work in similar ways and often come together. For example, a churchyard at night gives images such as tombstones, a moonlit sky and the outline of a gothic building, and may evoke an atmosphere of the irrational, the eerie and life after death.

A code of action and change

Action is the progress of the story in terms of happenings, events, turning points and so on. It is not the same as what happens in the real world. Story action is compressed, dramatic and moves between phases such as build-up, climax and relief. However, action must make sense, and therefore it relates to the ways things happen in the real world in terms of verisimilitude, believability, and cause and effect. Action codes can be seen to relate to plans of action in the real world.

The action and change in a story is organised into a plot or set of plots. In the so-called classic narrative, the protagonist is at the centre of a main plot which is only resolved or brought to a head at the end of the story. Around the main plot there may be less important plots concerning other characters. These are called sub-plots.

A code of character

Characters are interesting because of their relation to real people, but characters are not people. Characters are part of the stories they inhabit.

The main character with whom the audience identifies is the protagonist. In a classic narrative the main plot concerns a single protagonist and the story is driven by various forces, including the protagonist's desires. A central question in any story is what does the protagonist want? The protagonist will be driven by at least two desires: a conscious desire and an unconscious desire.

Open and Closed Narratives

Differences between the ways stories get told in different media are partly, to do with the material (sound, celluloid, computer screens, line drawings, image and sound, words alone) of that medium. But they are also to do with institutional or industrial demands. Below suggests differences in how 'closed' or single and 'open' or serial narratives tend to work in those different media institutions, 'cinema' and 'broadcasting'.

'Closed' narrative e.g. films in cinema	'Open' narrative e.g. television and radio soap opera
1. 'Tight' reading involved; audience aware it's watching a complete story and therefore reading with the likely end in mind.	1. Casual reading, without the sense of an ending; soaps proceed as though they could go on for ever- even when one is terminated.
2. Relatively few central characters; 'depth' of audience knowledge often set up, with even interior voice overs giving characters' thoughts, hallucinations etc.	2 Many more characters, naturalistically represented and producing a multi-strand plot.
3. Characters arranged in a 'hierarchy' (central, cameo, supporting roles, extras, etc.).	3. Characters not usually in a marked hierarchy but shift in and out of prominence (partly to suit the production needs of the serial).
4. Often with audience invited to make 'verdicts' on them, identifying narrative roles, as in hero, villain, victim.	4. Characters shift also in and out of narrative function. Today's villain may be next week's helper or even hero.
5. Time usually very compressed: typical two hours of screen time constructs events as happening over months, years, sometimes centuries.	5. Time usually corresponds to 'real world time' within the segments of each episode, though across it time is compressed, as in cinema. Flashbacks rare.
6. Time and events are usually special to this particular story, and need have no resemblance to the viewer's world, though specific reference is possible as are flashbacks and even flash forwards.	6. The differences between time in the serial and outside are blurred. Episodes may make brood reference to real-life events going on at the same time, such as elections, Christmas.
7. Reader or viewer usually has evidence about the characters only from this single text- plus star, publicity and genre expectations (though synergy and the prevalence of sequels complicate this).	7. Audiences are assumed to have different kind of memory, and knowledge of a long-running soap. Magazines, television, the press often speculate about actors' contracts, and thus the fate of characters.
8. The same audience can be assumed to watch the film from beginning to end.	8. Each episode has to try to address both experienced and new viewers.
9. Often elaborate visual image, and music as integral part of the narrative.	9. Relatively rare use of music, especially in British soaps, and relatively simple visual image.

Classic Hollywood Narrative

By the 1930s and 1940s, a highly specific mode of cinematic representation had become dominant. In the 1930s, the cultural ascendancy of narrative cinema was complete, and a particular set of cinematic codes through which film narratives were constructed and articulated was already quite firmly in place. Noel Burch (1973) has called this set of codes the Institutional Mode of Representation (IMR). The IMR could be said to consist basically of conventions of mise-en-scene, framing, and in particular of editing, by means of which coherent narrative space and time are set up and fictional characters individuated in ways which both engage, and are imperceptible to, the spectator.

Crucial in this process is the organisation of shots in a film according to the rules of continuity editing. Perhaps the foremost effect of continuity editing is to efface the moment of transition between shots, with the result that spectators are caught up in the film to such an extent that disbelief is suspended, and they are swept along with the story, unaware of the artifice of the means of representation. It is commonly accepted that this 'zero point of cinematic style' enjoyed its apotheosis in the Hollywood cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, the era of the 'classic' narrative system.

The Classic Narrative System

By the early to middle 1930s, the modes of representation now held to be characteristic of 'classic' narrative cinema were more or less consolidated and had already attained a large degree of dominance, certainly in Hollywood, but also in varying degrees in film industries elsewhere. By this time, sound cinema was also established. The era of classic cinema may be regarded as a period in which the cinematic image remained largely subservient to the requirements of a specific type of narrative structure. This structure is that of the classic, sometimes also called the 'realist', narrative which calls forth certain modes of narration which are then put into effect by a limited set of cinematic codes.

The classic narrative structure

In the classic narrative, events in the story are organised around a basic structure of enigma and resolution. At the beginning of the story, an event may take place which disrupts a preexisting equilibrium in the fictional world. It is then the task of the narrative to resolve that disruption and set up a new equilibrium. The classic narrative may thus be regarded as a process whereby problems are solved so that order may be restored to the world of the fiction. But the process of the narrative is also subject to a certain ordering. Events in the story are typically organised in a relationship of cause and effect, so that there is a logic whereby each event of the narrative is linked with the next. The classic narrative proceeds step- by-step in a more or less linear fashion, towards an apparently inevitable resolution. The 'realist' aspects of the classic narrative are overlaid on this basic enigma-resolution structure, and typically operate on two levels: first, through the verisimilitude of the fictional world set up by the narrative and second through the inscription of human agency within the process of the narrative.

The world of the classic narrative is governed by verisimilitude, rather than by documentary-style realism. The narration ensures that a fictional world, understandable and believable to the recipient of the story, is set up. Verisimilitude may be a feature of the representation of either, or preferably both, the spatial location of events in the narrative and the temporal order in which they occur. In classic narrative, moreover, events are propelled forward through the agency of fictional individuals or characters. The central characters of classic narrative are typically represented as fully rounded individuals with certain traits of personality, motivations, desires and so on. The chain of events constituting the story is then governed by the motivations and actions of these characters.

Finally, classic narrative may be defined by the high degree of closure which typically marks its resolution. The ideal classic narrative is a story with a beginning, a middle and an end (in that order), in which every one of the questions raised in the course of the story is answered by the time the narration is complete.

Postmodern Narratives

Cinema audiences have certain expectations when it comes to narrative structure; we expect a chronological story to be told in a linear sequence of plot events leading to a logical and resolved conclusion. Films that are labelled as postmodern play with our expectations of narrative structure, cinematic conventions and character types. The following list outlines some of the features of postmodern films:

• Non-linear or fractured narrative structures.

• Intertextuality with other media forms, for example, animation.

• Lack of resolution.

• Lack of time or space context.

• Lack of recognisable character types.

• Obvious editing or other technical detail.

Reflection
Before researching into narrative as a whole, I already had a very good understanding of narrative theory. However this research has supported and developed my understanding of narrative as a whole and it's key concepts. I now have a better understanding of what an open and closed narrative is as well as a understanding of a classic Hollywood narrative opposed to a postmodern narrative which will be very supportive and influential in the creation and decisions I will make in creating a short film. This research has been critical in developing my understanding and knowledge of how to create a successful short film and what is necessary to do so.

References:

Books:
Nicholas, J., Price, J. (1998). Advanced Studies in Media. Nelson
Mark, J., Angela, B., Danny, R. (2005). Advanced Level Media: Second Edition. Hodder & Stoughton Rehahn, E. (2003). Narrative in Film and TV. Auteur
Branston, G., Staffordd, R. (2006). The Media Student's Book. Routledge
Cook, P., Bernink, M. (1999). The Cinema Book. BFI

Websites:
Green., T. (2011). Narrative Analysis. [Online] Youtube. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJfpqVtPHWI&  [Accessed 10 August 2012].