Exemplars

It's the 1 B question that you are looking at in the exemplars.

http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/286030-a2-level-exemplar-candidate-work-unit-g325.pdf

http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/179236-example-candidate-answers-from-june-2013.pdf

More genre

http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/intgenre/chandler_genre_theory.pdf

http://samples.sainsburysebooks.co.uk/9781134973460_sample_825836.pdf

06 g325sectionaq1b-genre-3 from ctrmedia

Genre Theory

Genre theory from HeworthMedia

Genre is a way of categorising a text through style and form. It is vital to be able to categorise texts in this way - both for production and analysis. Most students associate genre with film, and indeed this is where categories can be most easily identified. There are a particular set of theories associated with film genre and you can read more about them here.

A text is classified in a genre through the identification of key elements which occur in that text and in others of the same genre. These elements may be referred to as paradigms, and range from costume to music to plot points to font (depending on the medium). Audiences recognise these paradigms, and bring a set of expectations to their reading of the text accordingly: the criminal will be brought to justice at the end of the police thriller. These paradigms may be grouped into those relating to iconography (ie the main signs and symbols that you see/hear),structure (the way a text is put together and the shape it takes) and theme (the issues and ideas it deals with).

Genre is important for both the readers and creators of texts (ie the audience and the producers).

Audiences

select texts on basis of genre, often because texts are arranged at retail outlets by genre (just pop along to HMV). Also, certain genres are considered appropriate to certain ages/genders in society, and choices are made accordingly eg teen movie, 'chick flicks' have systems of expectations about the content and style of a text, according to its genre. This enables them to take particular pleasures in the text, those of repetition, and of predicted resolution. Pleasure may also be drawn from differences. identify with repeated elements in generic texts and may shape their own identity in response (eg fans of a particular genre of music dress in a specific way - metalheads in their band t-shirts, for instance)

Producers

market texts according to genre because a niche audience has already been identified as taking pleasure in that type of text standardise production practices according to genre conventions, thus cutting costs subscribe to established conventions of versimilitude, thus reinforcing genre conventions, but also allowing creativity within a given format eg) it is an accepted convention in science fiction that spaceships make noises, which helps create excitement in battle scenes, but it is a scientific fact that no sound travels through the vacuum that is space.

Classification by genre is seen as both positive and negative by audiences, producers and theorists. On the one hand, rigorous conformity to established conventions while giving the audience what they want, can actually lead to stagnation and the eventual ossification of a genre as a "they're all the same" judgement is passed. This is what happened to the traditional Hollywood Western and Musical - once many profitable examples of these genres were pumped out by the studio each year, but the formats became stale through over-repetition and audiences lost interest. It is now only when a new Western or Musical that challenges the conventions and defies expectation (Brokeback Mountain or Moulin Rouge) comes along that non-niche audiences are willing to watch.

On the other hand, the genre of reality television has defied criticism that it is stale, contrived and predictable, and is now the basis of programming for entire networks. Although all possible variations of the same structure (contestants compete for a prize/live in the same house/go about a heightened version of their daily lives), iconography (surface realism and non-actors) and theme (aren't these people making idiots of themselves?) seem to have been run through in the space of a decade, it's still popular with audiences, who seem to enjoy the familiarity of the patterns presented onscreen.

Genre can provide structure and form which can allow a great deal of creativity and virtuosity, especially when a genuine reworking of generic conventions comes along (the Coen Brothers' reimagining of the Western in No Country For Old Men). Genre provides key elements for an audience to recognise, so that they may further appreciate the variation and originality surrounding the representation of those elements. When Scream was released in 1996, writer Kevin Williamson was praised for his fresh, ironic take on the conventional teenage slasher movie. He took the conventions (band of promiscuous teenagers picked off one by one by killer unknown) and turned them around, with the characters' self-awareness of their own predictability ("Oh, please don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface, I wanna be in the sequel!") used as a prime point of pleasure for the audience. However, by the time Scary Movie 4 was released in 2004, it was seen as "formulaic and predictable". Thus we can see that most genre paradigms form part of a fluid system - they are constantly changing and adapting according to audience tastes, individual entries into the genre and societal influences.

GREAT SITE THAT GIVES MORE DETAIL HERE:

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre.html

Current state of genre theory

The definition of genre from dictionary.com is "a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, context, technique, or the like." Although it seems that genre should be easy to define, the finer points of textual categorization are not yet established.

Genres, according to Daniel Chandler, create order to simplify the mass of available information. Creating categories promotes organization instead of chaos. Jane Feuer has divided ways to categorize genres into three different groups. The first is aesthetic. By using this method one can organize according to certain sets of characteristics, and so the overall work of the artist is not disparaged by generalization. The second classification method is ritual. Ritual uses its own culture to help classify. If one performs a ritual associated with a system of ritual, one can be said to be practicing as a member of that system. The common taxonomical method is ideological. This occurs most often in the marketing of texts, music, and movies. The effectiveness of this type of categorization can be measured by how well the public accepts these categories as valid.

Amy J. Devitt focuses on rhetorical genre. Scholars generally recognize the restrictions placed on works that have been classified as a certain genre. However, viewing genre as a rhetorical device gives the author and the reader more freedom and "allows for choices." Genres are not free-standing entities, but are actually intimately connected and interactive amongst themselves. Rhetorical genre recognizes that genres are generated by authors, readers, publishers, and the entire array of social forces that act upon a work at every stage of its production.

This recognition does not make the taxonomy of texts easy. Chandler points out that very few works have all the characteristics of the genre in which they participate. Also, due to the interrelatedness of genres, none of them is clearly defined at the edges, but rather fade into one another. Genre works to promote organization, but there is no absolute way to classify works, and thus genre is still problematic and its theory still evolving.

Moreover, the metagenre as a concept has been an importaint point to study. According to Giltrow, metagenre is "situated language about situated language". Metagenres such as institutional guidelines can be "ruling out certain kinds of expression, endorsing others", constraining and enabling. The concept of metagenre also provides a valuable way to understand the dynamics of institutional interrelations between genres. In the mental health discourse, for example, has been demonstrated the metageneric function of the American Psychiatric Association's (DSM) for standardizing and mediating the localized epistemological communicative practices of psychiatrists.

Exam 1 b genre

Read the Powerpoint, the post below, the mark scheme and exemplar answer (not a very good one) and attempt the question after having made notes.

1B Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre    



Genre Powerpoint

 Candidates will need to choose one production from either Foundation Portfolio or
Advanced Portfolio.

•   Explanation/analysis/argument (10 marks) 
•   Use of examples (10 marks) 
•   Use of terminology (5 marks). 
  Examiners are reminded that candidates are asked to relate a media production to a theoretical concept and they are at liberty to either apply the concept to their production or explain how the concept is not useful in relation to their production. 

Mark Scheme June 2010

Level 1

Explanation/analysis/argument (0-3 marks)
Candidates at this level attempt to relate the production to the basic concept of representation, with limited clarity. The account may be incomplete or be only partly convincing.
Use of examples (0-3 marks)
Very few, if any, examples are offered from the chosen production.
Use of terminology (0-1 marks)
The answer offers minimal use of relevant basic conceptual terms.
Some simple ideas have been expressed. There will be some errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar which will be noticeable and intrusive. Writing may also lack legibility.
Level 2
Explanation/analysis/argument (4-5 marks)
Candidates offer a mainly descriptive, basic account of how their production can be understood in the basic theoretical context of representation.
Use of examples (4-5 marks)
A narrow range of examples are described, of which some are relevant.
Use of terminology (2 marks)
The answer makes basic use of relevant conceptual terms.
Some simple ideas have been expressed in an appropriate context. There are likely to be some errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar of which some may be noticeable and intrusive.
Level 3
Explanation/analysis/argument (6-7marks)
Candidates demonstrate the ability to relate their own creative outcomes to some ideas about media representation drawn from relevant media theory.
Use of examples (6-7 marks)
Some relevant and convincing examples from the production are offered and these are handled proficiently.
Use of terminology (3 marks)
The answer makes proficient use of relevant conceptual language.
Relatively straightforward ideas have been expressed with some clarity and fluency. Arguments are generally relevant, though may stray from the point of the question. There will be some errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar but these are unlikely to be intrusive or obscure meaning.

Level 4

Explanation/analysis/argument (8-10 marks)
Candidates demonstrate a clear understanding of representation and relevant media theory and can relate concepts articulately to the production outcome, describing specific elements in relation to theoretical ideas about how media texts represent the world and social life.
Use of examples (8-10 marks)
Candidates offer a broad range of specific, relevant, interesting and clear examples of how their product can be understood in relation to relevant theories of representation.
Use of terminology (4-5 marks)
The use of conceptual language is excellent.
Complex issues have been expressed clearly and fluently using a style of writing appropriate to the complex subject matter. Sentences and paragraphs, consistently relevant, have been well structured, using appropriate technical terminology. There may be few, if any, errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar.

EXEMPLAR ANSWERS

1b)
Genre is often used as a way of distinguishing one style from another; it categorises works so that the audience can more easily choose what they want to experience. For my music video, the genre of our music was a hybrid of electropop/rock/dance, which come mostly from the original song and from our personal tastes. Since our genre is modern and not common, we drew conventions from artists that had similar styles to ours. The conventions we found for music video for our genre are; editing often cuts to the beat; for female artists – costumes are bold, they wear high heels, ands the performances are strong and full of attitude. Examples of artists’ videos that do this are Beyonce (through her powerful dance routines and sexy costumes) and Lady GaGa (who wears extreme hair, costume and makeup).
My music video consisted of my group members (4 girls) giving powerful performances with sections of dance routine. We stuck to these conventions because we wanted the audience to recognise it as belonging to a genre and looking back at it now I think we succeeded. The genre has postmodern influences as does our video. It starts with a short narrative to no music, where a girl looks at a picture in a locket of her and a guy, slams it shut and looks in a mirror – which transports her into ‘subconscious mind’. We filmed the bulk of our video in an all-white studio and with our powerful costumes that intertextually referenced the deadly sins and Marie Antoinette the audience can quite clearly see that it is not reality.
You can see that our video promotes strong women by their feisty performance and this is emphasised by the use of a male, white headless, mannequin with a ‘perfect’ torso. In the video the sins are corrupting the girl (but they are all just facets of her personality) and they dominate the mannequin. This is in contrast with Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ whereby media is predominantly made with a male or masculine audience in mind. Our target audience is 14-25 year old women, and this is obvious because the audience immediately identify with the main girl since she is the focus of the narrative and on the mannequin’s torso is a kiss mark, showing the women ‘marking their territory’ on him. If we were targeting men we would’ve used a real man, but by our production decisions the target audience and genre is clear.
We followed the convention of cutting shots to the beat, however we challenged the convention of keeping lines of the song in one shot. We cut midway through words and phrases in order to quicken the pace, which is often fast for this genre. An aspect of the genre which we developed is comedy. In some of the music videos artists take themselves very seriously, however we combined the sexy performances with the comic editing and cut aways to five the characters a ‘human feel’ in the make believe

world. For example we used what was originally going to be an outtake, where one girl shakes her bum from side to side, and we matched it to the beat, giving it a comic edge.
You can apply Lyotard’s theory of mete-narratives to our video since it blurs the lines between reality and fantasy using the key signifier of a mirror in the opening narrative.
I think the my music video successfully conveys its genre while still maintaining enigma. The Reception Theory can be applied, since from feedback, many people had different interpretations, which is what this genre is all about. Looking at it objectively I would say that it is a fun, interesting video that invites playability and successfully promotes the song, which is the aim of a music video.
EAA 7 EG 8 T4 (19)

1b)
For my A2 production (Advanced Portfolio) I created a teaser trailer in the sub-genre of slasher from the genre of Horror. The synopsis of this teaser trailer is about a young couple (roughly 17-19 years of age) who are in love in the beginning but the relationship turns sore and they split up, the girls moves on with her life and the boy doesn’t like this and starts to follow her; The girl starts tutoring a guy in her class who is struggling but who is a complete binary opposition to her ex-boyfriend in the sense that he is a bit of a geeky character and her ex-boyfriend is a Jock (both of these characters you will find stereotypically in horror films) one by one the girls friends keep disappearing or are murdered and the suspision lies in the hands of the ex- boyfriend due to spite. But the question is does he really love her enough to not kill her? Throughout the trailer the audience thinks the ex-boyfriend si the killer but actually as it turns out it’s the geeky boy who has become very obsessive over the girl and wants her to himself.
The characters in this production are all very stereotypical of what you would find in an American ‘slasher/horro’ film. The two main female protagonists are ‘Carie’ and ‘Hannah’ Carie is your stereotypical ‘final girl’ which you would find in of not all, most horror films, this character is always brunette and seen to be ‘innocent’ we used this key code and convention of the genre horror from the film ‘Halloween’ staring ‘Jamie Lee Curtis’, As she is the ‘final girl’, she has brunette hair, the same as ‘Catie’ and she also wears the coulor blue as throughout our production ‘Catie’ is seen wearing the colour blue. For ‘Hannah’ she is our stereotypical ‘scream queen’ we looked at a film called ‘Hell Night’ and from seeing this their ‘scream queen’ was

wearing red, had red lipstick and had blonde hair, we chose our character of ‘hannah’ specifically so that she would have blonde hair and we also dressed her in a red costume and put red lipstick on her for her makeup. These two characters are complete binary opposites and are juxtaposed together.
From our research into ‘Horror’ teaser trailers we found that a common code and convention was a fast montage so we created a fast montage of all the killings throughout the film, however we also found that ‘slasher’ films portrayed someone else as the killer so that the audience don’t actually know who the killer is, or the suspect that the wrong person until is revealed at the end of the film; this is strereotypically done in horror films to create tension, suspense and even a narrative enigma.
On some shots of the killings eg. When the killer is following ‘Abby’ one the girls friends down into an underground tunnel, you have a point of view shot in the perspective of the killer walking behind Abby with the view of her back, we also tried to create yellow tinted lighting, using colour filters as we also found that this was a common code and convention of ‘horror’ also with the colour blue.
Through using these different lighting effects I have tried to anchor the preffered reading so the audience can tell what the genre of the film would be but also to connote that something bad is about to happen to that specific character.
There were many more signifiers throughout our media production that would have signified the genre to the audience however it was difficult with having to create a piece that lasted between 60-90 seconds and due to the fact that we are young film makers we don’t have big Hollywood film funding budgets. We only have small budgets to go on make-up and costumes. Had we had larger budgets though we would have been able to create a production a lot better. So there were limitations which could have had an effect on the genre.
EAA 6 EG 7 T3 (16) 

1b)
The media production I am going to write about in relation to genre is my favourite piece from the whole course which is my horror teaser trailer.
The genre of the trailer is obviously ‘horror’ and this in itself allowed us to be creative with narrative etc but limited us because we had to stick to a certain amount of generic conventions in order for it to be recognised by it’s existing target audience. Steve Neal said that ‘genre is a repetition with an underlying pattern of variations’ which meant certain generic features had to be included and repeated which in my case was the use of a creepy location of the woods as well as hand held camera and restricted narration to cause disorientation and suspense within our trailer. However, the pattern of variation Neal describes also links to my horror teaser trailer because we were able to creatively push the boundaries by twisting some generic features in order to make the trailer interesting and therefore cause the audience to want to watch the full movie. For this my group chose use a female psycho killer I order to subvert the stereotypical male dominated role. This female identification through point of view shots etc captured our female audience because were providing them with power and this is unusual for the horror genre although it is known for its forward thinking approach as it often attempts to focus on subcultural views instead of targeting the mainstream. Genre encompasses many parts and the trailer links to it in more ways than one. Its use of enclosed location and the fact the woods attempts to reinforce our society’s fear of loneliness and isolation which the woods creates when the three friends get lost. In these sections of the trailer we used a lot of heavy cross cutting between the female victim who is running anxiously through the woods in order to find her friends and get home safely. We also used the Kuleshove and collision cutting methods as the pace began slow as the friends head our in the car unaware of the danger before them and once they are in the woods we deliberately quickened the pace of editing to cause tension and to show that something is not right, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats.
Editing and mise-en-scene is really important to genre and reflects very quickly certain moods and atmospheres. Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes argued that the horror genre like many others used ‘binary oppositions’ in order to show the contrast between good and evil in order to force the audience to be constantly questioning the trailer for example; in my trailer I used light and dark to connote their happiness and carefree attitude in the daytime and the darkness to emphasise their fear and reliance

on their senses. This is particularly important to the horror genre as characters are often shown in high angle shots to appear vulnerable and therefore under threat.
Gore or ‘body horror’ is also a common generic convention used by most horror films that we studied including Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero who used it to make the audience feel sick by forcing them to see extreme violence. In my own trailer we were inspired to use gore differently by showing a hanging scene in slow motion to create tension and the centoring in on the face and neck which had been broken and this was shown by the rope burn we had made from latex and the blood pouring down her chest. This shot moves clockwise and slowly zooms in to force the audience to see what the hang (woman) has done. In our final two shots we finish the trailer with the male anti hero being lifted off the ground with blood pouring out of his mouth which causes the audience to assume no one survives because the final girl is stabbed by her friend accidentally which quickens the pace and adds tension but she is the survivor who as Carol Clover suggests will be terrorised throughout the film and finally overcome the monster. This plays with the audiences emotions and links back to the horror genre well by creating our own style of horror. Andrew Sarris argues because it encompasses so much and is key to explaining a film. Genre is the ideas that collectively make a particular recognisable style that draws in its existing target audience. My horror trailer had expressionist camera angles as the female victim desperately trips over the camera and we see her running above it as well as close ups of her facial expression that causes us to identify with her fear and therefore makes us scared. This meant the audience also were forced to objectify the female victim from the high angle camera shot down her top in which we can see her breasts slightly after watching other Hitchcock movies which use the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey to force us to take a male’s viewpoint.
In my trailer we also used an iconic symbol of the noose because obviously as a hangwoman she needed the prop but also as a female the circular shape suggested female power and this is something the horror genre often does but for male characters using guns etc as phallic symbols which we also used as the male anti hero takes out a knife and stabs his friend frantically when she walks up behind him. The horror trailer was made much darker in Final Cut Pro using the brightness and contrast menu and also dragged the saturated colours towards the blue in order to create a dark, dusky night time atmosphere a generic convention of horror trailers. The generic conventions we chose to use were all important to the success of our product and since distributing it on YouTube we have over 4000 which I am really pleased with and gives me the confidence that we obviously stuck to the genre enough to capture our intended target audience but were creative enough to make people want to keep watching the trailer and virally sharing it with others.
Genre places a media text into a grouping giving it an identity which can be recognised by the mainstream society and I believe my product is successfully fitted to the horror genre using the narrative that todorov argued was important to the horror genre by following an equilibrium at the beginning then a problem which in our case was the male anti hero playing a joke on the soon to be female victim making jump running after him causing their separation then a pathway to resolution – as they attempt to find each other and then a new equilibrium at the end which we deliberately left as an open ending to capture our audience effectively.
EAA 10 EG 10 Term 5 

Some blogs

Check out this final piece, Overshadowed, incredible. Also see how the blog has been a detailed record of everything from inspirations, through documented creative challenges etc.

https://mayamdemangeat.wordpress.com

This one is a good record of progress, if a bit text heavy.
https://jordanputt.wordpress.com

This is our best one from last year
http://elliewildmana2media.blogspot.co.uk/

I really want you to get into the way of posting every day or other day. It's not enough to post screen shots, or music videos etc without commentary on how it's inspiring you, what you like about it etc. Think about your blogs from last year and the ways in which you could have done it better. Now's your chance to improve.

Narrative theory

Narrative

In media terms, narrative is the coherence/organisation given to a series of facts. The human mind needs narrative to make sense of things. We connect events and make interpretations based on those connections. In everything we seek a beginning, a middle and an end. We understand and construct meaning using our experience of reality and of previous texts. Each text becomes part of the previous and the next through its relationship with the audience.

The difference between Story & Narrative:

"Story is the irreducible substance of a story (A meets B, something happens, order returns), while narrative is the way the story is related (Once upon a time there was a princess...)" (Key Concepts in Communication - Fiske et al (1983))

Media Texts

Reality is difficult to understand, and we struggle to construct meaning out of our everyday experience. Media texts are better organised; we need to be able to engage with them without too much effort. We have expectations of form, a foreknowledge of how that text will be constructed. Media texts can also be fictional constructs, with elements of prediction and fulfilment which are not present in reality. Basic elements of a narrative, according to Aristotle:

"...the most important is the plot, the ordering of the incidents; for tragedy is a representation, not of men, but of action and life, of happiness and unhappiness - and happiness and unhappiness are bound up with action. ...it is their characters indeed, that make men what they are, but it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse." (Poetics - Aristotle(Penguin Edition) p39-40 4th century BC )

Successful stories require actions which change the lives of the characters in the story. They also contain some sort of resolution, where that change is registered, and which creates a new equilibrium for the characters involved. Remember that narratives are not just those we encounter in fiction. Even news stories, advertisements and documentaries also have a constructed narrative which must be interpreted.

Narrative Conventions

When unpacking a narrative in order to find its meaning, there are a series of codes and conventions that need to be considered. When we look at a narrative we examine the conventions of

• Genre
• Character
• Form
• Time

and use knowledge of these conventions to help us interpret the text. In particular, Time is something that we understand as a convention - narratives do not take place in real time but may telescope out (the slow motion shot which replays a winning goal) or in (an 80 year life can be condensed into a two hour biopic). Therefore we consider "the time of the thing told and the time of the telling." (Christian Metz Notes Towards A Phenomenology of Narrative).

It is only because we are used to reading narratives from a very early age, and are able to compare texts with others that we understand these conventions. A narrative in its most basic sense is a series of events, but in order to construct meaning from the narrative those events must be linked somehow.

Barthes´ Codes

Roland Barthes describes a text as

"a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation)

What he is basically saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter an absolute plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread if you like, and create an entirely different meaning. And so on. An infinite number of times. If you wanted to.

Barthes wanted to - he was a semiotics professor in the 1950s and 1960s who got paid to spend all day unravelling little bits of texts and then writing about the process of doing so. All you need to know, again, very basically, is that texts may be ´open´ (ie unravelled in a lot of different ways) or ´closed´ (there is only one obvious thread to pull on).

Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative codes and that they could be categorised in the following five ways:

• Action/proiarectic code & enigma code (ie Answers & questions)
• Symbols & Signs
• Points of Cultural Reference
• Simple description/reproduction

Narrative Structures

There are many ways of breaking down narrative structure. You may hear a movie described as a "classic Hollywood narrative", meaning it has three acts. News stories have their own structure. A lot of work has been done by literary theorists to develop ways of deconstructing a narrative.

• Tvzetan Todorov - suggests narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium
• Vladimir Propp - characters and actions (31 functions of character types)
• Claude Levi-Strauss - constant creation of conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual (light/darkness, movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate, control/panic), and to do with soundtrack. Binary oppositions.

Deconstructing Narratives

Separating Plot And Story

Think of a feature film, and jot down a) the strict chronological order in which events occur b) the order in which each of the main characters finds out about these events a) shows story, b) shows plot construction. Plot keeps audiences interested eg) in whether the children will discover Mrs Doubtfire is really their father, or shocks them, eg) the 'twist in the tale" at the end of The Sixth Sense. Identifying Narrator Who is telling this story is a vital question to be asked when analysing any media text. Stories may be related in the first or third person, POVs may change, but the narrator will always

• reveal the events which make up the story
• mediate those events for the audience
• evaluate those events for the audience

The narrator also tends to POSITION the audience into a particular relationship with the characters on the screen.

Comprehending Time

Very few screen stories take place in real time. Whole lives can be dealt with in the 90 minutes of a feature film, an 8 month siege be encompassed within a 60 minute TV documentary. There are many conventions to denote time passing, from the time/date information typed up on each new scene ofThe X-Files to the aeroplane passing over a map of a continent in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Other devices to manipulate time include

• flashbacks
• dream sequences
• repetition
• different characters' POV
• flash forwards
• real time interludes
• pre-figuring of events that have not yet taken place

Locating the Narrative

Each story has a location. This may be physical and geographical (eg a war zone) or it may be mythic (eg the Wild West). Virtual locations are now a feature of many newsrooms (eg the computers and holograms of the BBC's Nine O'Clock News). There are sets of conventions to do with that location, often associated with genre and form (eg all space ships seem to look the same inside).

A good way to test your understanding of narrative is to apply the theories to a non-linear narrative such as the movieMemento (2002). You can find a study guide to Memento here.

Further Reading

This is a complex area of media theory and many of the websites available are written in language aimed at undergraduates or above. If you are feeling brave, try the following

• A Semiotic Analysis of a Newspaper Story - undergraduate essay
• More on Narrative Structure in Star Wars from frame24
• Villains and Heroes - do news audiences construct their own narratives DESPITE the facts? A fascinating look at US coverage of the Chandra Levy story
• News Forms - a look at the way news narratives are constructed from Transparency.com

NARRATIVE THEORY

Narrative theory studies the devices and conventions governing the organisation of a story (fictional or factual) into a sequence.

TZVETAN TODOROV (Bulgarian structuralist linguist publishing influential work on narrative from the 1960s onwards) Todorov suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium or status quo where any potentially opposing forces are in balance. This is disrupted by some event, setting in chain a series of events. Problems are solved so that order can be restored to the world of the fiction.

VLADIMIR PROPP (A Russian critic who examined 100s of examples of folk tales to see if they shared. any structures. His book on this 'Morphology of the Folk Tale' was first published in 1928) Propp looked at 100s of folk tales and identified 8 character roles and 31 narrative functions.

The 8 character roles are

1. The villain(s)

2. The hero

3. The donor ‑ who provides an object with some magic property.

4. The helper who aids the hero.

5. The princess (the sought for person) ‑ 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

The character roles and the functions identified by Propp can be applied to all kinds of narrative. In TV news programmes we are often presented with 'heroes' and ‘villains'. Just think of the media portrayal of Saddam Hussein or Princess Diana.

CLAUDE LEVI‑STRAUSS Levi‑Strauss looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. An example would be GOOD and EVIL ‑ we understand the concept of GOOD as being the opposite of EVIL. Levi ‑Strauss was not so interested in looking at the order in which events were arranged in the plot. He looked instead for deeper arrangements of themes. For example, if we look at Science Fiction films we can identify a series of binary oppositions which are created by the narrative:

Earth Space

Good Evil

Humans Aliens

Past Present

Normal Strange

Known Unknown

NARRATIVE ‑ TIME & SPACE

Narrative shapes material in terms of space and time ‑ it defines where things take place, when they take place, how quickly they take place. Narrative, especially that of film and TV, has an immense ability to manipulate our awareness of time and place e.g. flashbacks, replays of action, slow motion, speeding up, jumping between places and times.

NARRATIVE MODES There are two main modes of narrative which need to be structured.

1 . The narrative of events e.g. ‑ A hero shoots an enemy agent, dives into a lake,

triggers a remote control device which will destroy the enemy submarine.

2. The narrative of drama e.g. ‑ The heroine has a tense argument with the hero

and decides he was never her type and she is going to leave. Nothing has really

happened in terms of events but a lot has happened dramatically.

Using narrative to build suspense

Restricted narrative can be used to surprise an audience, e.g. when a character does not know what is waiting around the corner and neither does the audience. A degree of unrestricted narrative, the other 'half', can be used to effectively build suspense, as the audience are anticipating the events to come, of which the character has no knowledge. We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There's a bomb beneath you and it's about to explode". In this first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of explosion. In the second case we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.[Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock (New York: Simon and Schuster,1967), p.52]

USING NARRATIVE TO MAKE MEANING IN FILM

Why is narrative important to us? Stories are very important in helping us to make sense of our lives and the world around us. Bordwell and Thompson point out the different ways in which we are surrounded by the story form;

• As children we listen to fairy tales and myths. Reading material as we progress becomes short stories, novels, history and biographies.

• Religion is often presented through collection of stories/moral tales e.g. the Bible/ the Koran.

• Scientific breakthrough is often presented as stories of an experimenter's trial. Cultural phenomena such as plays, films, TV, dance, paintings tell stories. Newspapers tell stories, Dreams are little stories in themselves

Narrative in film

Most of the films we see at the cinema are narrative films, films that tell a story. Even films which are factual often employ story methods to get this point across, for instance a documentary may follow the 'story' of a group of environmental warriors over a period of six months in their fight to prevent a road being built. We are so steeped in the narrative tradition that we approach a film with certain expectations, whether we know anything about the story or not. For example: We expect The opening to give us information about who, what and where. There to be characters who interact with each other. To see a series of incidents, which are connected with each other. Problems and/or conflicts. The ending to resolve the action or cast new light on what has happened. As the viewer watches a film, they pick up cues, recall information, anticipate what will follow, and generally participate in the creation of the film's form. The film shapes the particular expectations by summoning up curiosity, suspense, and surprise. The viewer also develops specific hunches about the outcome of the action, and these may control our expectations right up to the end. The ending has the task of satisfying or cheating the expectations prompted by the film as a whole. The ending may also activate memory by cueing the spectator to review earlier events, possibly in a new light. As we examine the narrative form, we will consider at various points how it engages the viewer in a dynamic activity.

Cause and Effect

Narrative can be defined as "a chain of events in cause‑effect relationships occurring

in time and space". It typically begins with one situation, a series of changes occur according to a pattern of cause and effect; finally a new situation arises that brings the end of the narrative. Todorov's narrative theory is based on this; an equilibrium is set up which is then disrupted, causing disequilibrium, which is resolved into a new equilibrium by the end of the tale.

When we are watching a film we try to connect the events to make sense of what is happening, to see a line of cause and effect. This is by far the most important factor in narrative because even if there is no obvious connection, we still try to make one. This is a natural reaction because making connections is how we make sense of the world around us, for example looking for a reason for feeling sick and concluding that we ate an undercooked sausage. What we are actually doing in film terms is connecting the images that we see in both time and space and creating a causal effect between them.

How does the director manipulate cause and effect?

The director can create a mood or atmosphere by choosing certain shots in a certain order, to build a picture in our minds. We automatically link what is happening in one shot with what happens in those either side of it, as this is what happens in real life. Thus, by showing us a window frame and then a shot of a house, we presume the house is what you see out of that window. In this way we are interacting with the film.

Some directors have exploited this idea to extremes. Lev Kuleshov, a Russian filmmaker in the 1920's experimented by showing people shots of an actor in between shots of different objects ‑ food, a dead woman and a child. The audience interpreted the actor's expressions (although it never changed!) as being hungry, sad and. affectionate. This is because our brains try to make continuitive sense of what we see. This placing together of images is called montage.

Sergei Eisenstein, another Russian filmmaker of the same era, believed that it was more effective if consecutive shots were not obviously linked as the audience were forced to think and interact more to make the mental jump from shot to shot. Montage can be used effectively in propaganda, where the filmmaker wants the audience to believe in a certain idea or concept. In a more light‑hearted way it is used today in pop videos and advertising, to encourage us to make associations and link ideas.

STORY vs PLOT

When we are linking images together in terms of cause and effect, one of the ways in which we do this is to look at what is happening on screen and assume that other events have taken place that we haven't actually seen. For instance, if we watch the opening to Gladiator, where a huge battle is about to take place we will assume that preparation for this battle has taken place, that the hero has proved himself to be a worthy leader in battle, that he has had a successful home life before this point. These events will have taken place in a different time and space to what we see on screen at present.

When discussing film narrative, we can make a distinction between the story and the plot (the plot is sometimes called the discourse)

a) The term plot is used to describe the events on screen and how they are organized/presented.

b) The term story is used to describe the whole set of events in a narrative that we bring to the plot in order to make sense of it. This will include not only the plot elements, which we have seen, but also the events we have inferred, which we have assumed have happened.The story world is often referred to as the diegetic world of the film, the imaginary world that we enter into when we set out to watch the film. (Thus we refer to a film's diegesis.) We should note that the plot may also include non‑diegetic material that is part of the plot but not part of the story world. So, the plot may include music and voiceover elements for instance ‑ these are not part of the story world because we know they would not really happen in this created world we are seeing ‑ they are 'add‑ons'

TIME

Cause and effect take place in time. As we watch a film, we try to put events in chronological order and allow them duration and frequency.

a) Temporal Order

The plot does not always show us events in strict chronological order i.e. the order in which they would have happened in real life. For instance, sometimes a flashback technique is used to show us what happened in the past, or less frequently, a flash forward to events which have not yet occurred. The narrative can also be presented in parallel terms, for instance we watch a scene where a character is getting ready for a party, then we see another scene where a friend is doing the same. The time when this is happening is parallel to each other ‑ it is happening at the same time in real terms. As with all narrative choices the filmmaker has made, we must look at why s/he has chosen to present events in this fashion and the effect it has upon us as an audience.

b) Temporal Duration

There are 3 distinctions of time within a film:

Screen duration: the time the film takes to show

Plot duration: the length of time the plot covers

Story duration: the length of time the story covers (including all the inferred events we bring to it)

c) Temporal Frequency

The plot of a film may show us an event which happens once in the film but we know to have happened many times in the story ‑ a short‑cutting of information for the viewer. For instance, in a film such as Gladiator, we see the hero fight four battles before his final triumph. We assume that many more battles have actually taken place, but we are being shown the most important ones in whatever respect. Alternatively, but less frequently, a story event may be shown more than one time during the plot ‑ we see an event occur from another angle which may lead us to view characters or events in a different light.

SPACE

Space is important in a film because the location is usually quite important. The plot sometimes leads us to infer other story space, which we may never see e.g. we know a character has gone off on holiday but we do not see this 'space'.Screen space selects portions of plot space to show us, just as it selects certain time events and leaves others out. The decisions that are made in terms of film space need to be examined in conjunction with close study of the visual elements of film language.

Fabula and syuzhet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Timeline of fabula vs syuzhet inMemento

Fabula and syuzhet (also sjuzhet, sujet, sjužet, or suzet (сюжет) ) are terms originating in Russian Formalism and employed in narratology that describe narrative construction. Syuzhet is an employment of narrative and fabula is the chronological order of the retold events. They were first used in this sense by Vladimir Propp and Shklovsky.^{[citation needed]}

The fabula is "the raw material of a story, and syuzhet, the way a story is organized."^[1] SinceAristotle(350 BCE, 1450b25) narrative plots are supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end. For example: the film Citizen Kane starts with the death of the main character, and then tells his life through flashbacks interspersed with a journalist's present-time investigation of Kane's life. This is often achieved in film and novels via flashbacks or flash-forwards. Therefore, the fabula of the film is the actual story of Kane's life the way it happened in chronological order; while the syuzhet is the way the story is told throughout the movie, including flashbacks.

Narrative theory

NARRATIVE THEORY – (Some of) The basics…

NARRATIVE THEORY – ‘How do stories work?’

• ARISTOTLE'S UNITIES - Perhaps the first 'narrative theory' as such. A narrative should be created within a 'unity' of time, place and action - that is, it should all take place in the same location, in real time, and with all action moving towards a logical (and moral) conclusion.
• FREYTAG'S DRAMATIC STRUCTURE- Gustav Freytag was a 19th Century German dramatist and novelist who constructed his theory from the analysis of ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama. Freytag's dramatic arc is divided into five parts. (Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action & Denouement/Catastrophe/Resolution)
• TODOROV’S THEORY – Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. He stated that films and programmes begin with an equilibrium, a calm period. Then agents of disruption cause disequilibrium, a period of unsettlement and disquiet. This is then followed by a renewed state of peace and harmony for the protagonists and a new equilibrium brings the chaos to an end. The simplest form of narrative (sometimes referred to as ‘Classic’ or ‘Hollywood’ narrative).

• PROPP’S THEORY –Vladimir Propp’s theory was formed in the early twentieth Century. He studies Russian fairytales and discovered that in stories there were always 8 types of characters evident. These are: the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess and her father. He did not state these characters were all separate people e.g. the provider could also be the helper. There are only 8 different character types and only 31 things they ever do. Once you have identified the character type (e.g., the hero) it’s easy to guess what they will do (save the maiden, defeat the villain, marry the maiden or whatever) because each character has a SPHERE OF ACTION. This is easily relatable to films and programmes today.

• BARTHES’ ENIGMA CODE – The narrative will establish enigmas or mysteries as it goes along. Essentially, the narrative functions to establish and then solve these mysteries.

• LEVI-STRAUSS’ BINARY OPPOSITION – Narrative tension is based on opposition or conflict. This can be as simple as two characters fighting, but more often functions at an ideological level – e.g., in Westerns, what do the cowboys and Indians each represent? What ideologies are embodied by the opposed sides in LOTR or Star Wars?

• Remember, still images can have narratives also – refer to what John Ellis called the ‘narrative image’
• Narrative Image
  
  
  This is all about the marketing of a film. The narrative image is what we think of before we actually see the film. It is the film’s image or identity, and how it is branded. It comes from the direct publicity surrounding a film (ie its marketing – the poster, trailer, video release etc) and also from word of mouth. It particularly draws on the generic qualities of the film. In other words, the marketing promotes the film’s genre signifiers in order to exploit the audience’s desire for familiarity and recognition – this brands the film and broadens its potential appeal.
  
  
  But the narrative image also centres around the idea of difference and originality. This comes in the form of the narrative enigma. The film’s publicity has to encourage the audience into asking questions about the film, and must intrigue the audience enough to want to know the answers. They will only be able to do this if they pay to go and see the film. This is the enigma – the mystery surrounding the film.
  
  
  So the narrative image is a promise – a promise to the audience that the film will deliver the answers. Often the narrative image is deliberately misleading, in order to widen the target audience – the core audience are encouraged to go and see a film that conforms to expectations, but are shocked by unexpected breaks with convention that may have put them off if they had known about it beforehand.
  
  
  In summary, narrative image combines similarity and difference and only works if this combination is finely tuned to target the audience effectively.
  
  
  
  

Narrative Theory Y13