Todorov
Narrative
structures traditionally follow a formula which was identified by Todorov. He studied classic fairy tales
and stories. He discovered that narratives moved forward in chronological order
with one action following after another, with a clear beginning, middle
and end.
Todorov also suggested that the characters in the narrative would be changed in some
way through the course of the story and that this would be evident by the
ending of the story.
These
are the traditional story formats:
1-
the narrative starts with an equilibrium.
2- an
actor or character disrupts the equilibrium.
3- a
quest to restore the equilibrium begins.
4-
the narrative continues to a climax.
5-
resolution occurs and equilibrium is restored.
Levi Strauss
Levi
strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist.
He
looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions. These are sets of
opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. Binary opposites
make the narrative move forward as they allow for actual or potential conflict
and from these we can establish meaning and relationships.
An
example of this is in the Beyonce single ladies music video where
light and dark is used:
Allen Cameron
Modular
narratives articulate a sense of time as divisible and subject to manipulation.
Cameron identified four different types of modular narrative.
1-
anachronic: involve the use of flashbacks and/or flash
forwards, with no clear dominance between any of the narrative threads. These
narratives also often repeat scenes directly via a different perspective.
2-
forking paths: narratives
juxtapose alternate versions of a story, showing the possible outcomes that
might result from small changes in a single event or group of events. The
forking-path narrative introduces a number of plot lines that usually
contradict one another.
3-
epidsodic: narratives are organised as an abstract series or narrative
anthology.
4-
split screen: These
films divide the screen into two or more frames, juxtaposing events within the
same visual field.
Propp
Propp was a soviet folklorist and scholar who analyzed the basic plot
components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible
narrative elements. He
did character theory and analysed hundred of folk and fairy tales.
He said that all narratives share the same structure with the same narrative.
He identified 7 character roles:
-Villain:
antagonist which struggles against hero
-Hero:
protagonist who usually seeks something
-Donor:
provides protagonist with an agent or object
-Princess:
damsel in distress and reward for hero
-Princess’
father: rewards the hero and attempts to marry her to the hero
-False
hero: claims to be hero and is portrayed as one but isnt
-Helper:
aids the hero
For our final film idea we completely changed it from our initial film idea. After much discussion and debate it was decided that filming a trailer based on the American president would be too hard to replicate in the UK as even though in the UK some people are opposed to Trump, it is not cared about enough for it to have a big enough impact in our trailer. For this reason we decided to change our idea and have it about a disease that only teenagers can get. A disease of which no one knows the cause, but scientists believe it is from teenagers spending too much time in isolation. The disease has caused teenagers to be unable to touch and have any form of physical contact. We also thought that this could be a sort of dystopian future and therefore could include plenty of new technology, allowing us to show all our skills and creativity. This idea is also more unique and thought-provoking than our initial idea and so should be more compelling and interesting. It also gave us the potential to experiment with it more until we got the perfect idea. For this idea we still wanted to relate it to current affairs, but we found a much cleverer way of doing it. We thought that the whole film could be a metaphor for modern day society and the fear people have of going out and getting close to strangers and societies they don't understand, because of the threat of terrorism that hangs over us. Our inspirations for this trailer were Children of Men which is a film about a dystopian future, it was also partially based on zombie films and how if they bite you then you transform. We decided to develop that idea though and make them completely unable to touch as that would be more unbearable for teenagers.
