Narrative and story are NOT the same thing. Story is WHAT happens. Narrative is HOW it happens – how the story and plot are combined.  Story: girl meets boy and fall in love  Plot: HOW the story is told - flashbacks, flash- forwards, voiceovers etc. The story and plot combine to form the narrative.

You need to closely ‘read’ the text and identify the various production elements (techniques) used to create the narrative (the WHAT) You need to analyse HOW they work You need to analyse WHY they work

Watch out for the following:  Film format (film stock / video / black and white etc.)  Cinematography  Lighting  Editing  Visual Composition (mise en scene)  Sound  Costume  Acting

The classic Hollywood narrative structure is the most common and dominant narrative structure. A cause-effect relationship is facilitated by a motivated character who has to overcome obstacles (conflict) and/or effect change to achieve their goal (resolution). Filmmakers occasionally subvert this classic structure by: reversing the cause and effect (i.e. murderer caught at beginning of film rather than end using a flashforward); or offering no resolution. Interesting techniques used in narrative structure include twists, flashbacks and flashforwards.

Film directors decide how and when to give the audience information. This is called the narrative point of view. It may be omniscient (all-knowing) or restricted (for example, one character’s point of view – which could be objective, perceptually or mentally subjective). This POV may alter throughout the film or an audience can be deceived ( The Sixth Sense).

Because if you know WHY something is done you might be able to do it yourself, and better, when you create your own media text! PLUS – you’ll acquire skills that mean you won’t be easily fooled by the cheap tricks of text producers.

The earliest films had no editing – they were simply shot, developed and screened. Hk (The Lumiere Brothers’ Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory – 1895)

The power of film was realised (Train Arriving At a Station – 1896 – caused members of the audience to scream in fear!) and people start experimenting. Russian, Kuleshov spliced pictures of a man and a bowl of soup and then the same shots of the man with a baby – audiences believed the man expressed different emotions (even though he didn’t)! re=related

The idea of cutting together images was developed by Sergei Eisenstein and is famously shown in the Odessa Steps scene of his 1925 film ‘Battleship Potemkin’. This is where montage was truly born. Eisenstein is also famous for his use of visual metaphors in this film where a lion statue, apparently awakening, represents the Russian people rising up in revolt.

Semiotics : the study of signs What we see on film or read in a newspaper is something that purports to be reality – it re-presents reality – and it uses signs (words or pictures) show us that reality. Important theorists…(great to quote for E grade!).  Ferdinand Saussure – semiotics (signifier / signified)  Roland Barthes – denotation / connotation (the creation of mythology – culturally based value systems)  Noam Chomsky – ‘propaganda model’ (the media is a tool for the dissemination of propaganda in an undemocratic way)  Jean Baudrillard – ‘hyperreality’ (signs referring to signs – ‘Disneyland castle’ = fairytale romance – has no ‘real world’ referent)

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