Narrative Structure in Film

How Films Tell StoriesPart I

Definition• Storytelling is a pervasive phenomenon• It seems that no culture or society is without

its myths, folktales, and sacred legends. • Narrative is the art of storytelling• Think of the story as the raw ingredients of a

text - narrative is the methodology of how it is put together. The narrator or producer of the text cooks it in a certain way.

• Narrative appears to be a subject universal of human experience

• a narrative was a story told, whereas a story that was enacted was considered drama. Now narrative is usually considered a transmedium phenomenon. A storycan be presented not only in language but also in pantomime, dance, images, and evenmusic. language remains our most important way of communicating with one another,and language-based narrative is our default.

• Film– Technological aspect– To sustain certain culture– Aesthetic qualitiesFilms tell stories.

Narrative FormDominant narrative medium in 20th

century

• For a fim to be a ‘narrative’ it must present us with a series of events in ways thatimply connections between one event and the next

• ‘cause-and-effect’ relationship: one event has the effect of causing another event, which causes another, and so on.

• Cinematic narration is arguably the most sophisticated of all narrative media, because it is ‘multi-track,’ both visual and audio. This enables fims to co-opt the communicative capabilities of a whole host of other mediaand forms.

• For example, films have linguistic communication through the presence ofdialogue or voice-over on the sound-track, or the inclusion of printed text within theimage (such as intertitles, shots of newspapers, books, letters etc.).

• As with other narrative media, such as novels, theatre, comic books, epicpoems etc., fims organize stories according to sets of conventions, which are understoodby fimmakers and recognized by fim viewers. Thus we respond to fims based on, notonly our experience of the ‘real world’, but also, the expectations we have formed throughwatching other fims.

• Genre is constituted by “specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process.”

1. To the producers of films, genre is a template for what they make.

2. To the distributor/promoter, genre provides assumptions about who the audience is and how to market the films for that specific audience.

3. To the audience, it is a label that identifies a liked or disliked formula and provides certain rules of engagement for the spectator in terms of anticipation of pleasure

4. In turn, viewers become ‘generic spectators’ and can be said to develop generic memory which helps the in the anticipation of events, even though the films themselves might play on certain styles rather than follow closely a clichéd formula.

• Cinema Narrative Rules – Rules for the way shots should be

assembled to provide greatest narrative efficiency (mise en scene)

– Rules for the way individual shots should be composed to direct attention to the relevant narrative information (montage)

Mise en Scene

Shot as Proto-Narratives• Film’s ability to reproduce actions in

photographically realistic space is the most important property it brings to telling of stories

• L’Arrive d’un train en gare (1895)– Flat images in rectangular space as 3D is an

advantage in “seeing the real” in film– The establishment of scene and completion of an

action– Very early stage in the development of cinematic

narrative, required no plot– Can establish a unity of place, unity of time, and

unity of action (Aristotle’s three narrative unities)

• Proto-narrative– Represent an event but is not yet a

narrative proper– It might become one, but only when its

combined with other, connected represented events.

– As a sentence does in prose but withour complex linguistic

– L’arrive proto narrative, by calculated act of framing (mise en scene)

• Cinema narrative – framing the event in a shot. Its already a

story of sort– Shot has its own perspective, duration,

logic, and justification– Effort to naturalise it so we can

experience it ‘like a novel’ or ‘stage play’

–

Plot & Story• Plot- A plot is a series of events deliberately

arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance. The plot is the meat and bones of the story. The plot is developed in order to create a better story

• Story- A story is a series of events recorded in their chronological order. The story is the idea, the general theme, and the loose interpretation of the event in its entirety.

• “The king died and then the queen died” is a kernel example of a story, and “the king died and then the queen died of grief” represents a plot.

David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson

• “when we speak of going to the movies, we almost always mean we are going to see a narrative film”

• “part of the pleasure of going to the cinema is the opportunity to suspend disbelief and to become engrossed in the ‘invisible’ process of story telling”

What is Narrative Form?What is Narrative Form?

• Narrative form is the structure though which movies tell stories.

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• Narratives appear throughout media and society – in novels, plays, comic books, television shows and even commercials.

• Narratives are most common in fiction film, but appear in all basic types of film:

– Documentaries– Animated films– Experimental and avant-garde films– Short Films

Narratives are EverywhereNarratives are Everywhere

NARRATIVE AND TIME• Objectively, time seems to always move at the same pace,

but the emotional speed of time can vary tremendously (see Shakespeare!), and the way we experience time in our heads is a function of memory, in which we can repeat events, or place them in a new order.  One of the ways that movies are different from "real" life is the way that they manipulate time.

• Movies can present or alter time any way they want to:  events do not have to go in linear order, and can be speeded up, slowed down, or repeated.  There are at least three different kinds of time in movies--story time, plot time, and screen time (see below).   But, the events shown in a movie have already happened: there is nothing the viewer of a movie can do to change any aspect of film time.  Obvious, but important.

• 1.  Temporal Order:

Narratives (stories) can be told in a number of ways. The simplest way to tell a story in a movie is called "direct or sequential narrative," which simply means that the passage of time and the order of events in the movies is exactly the same as "real" time.  Events start at the beginning and go on the the end without interruption (ellipsis), extension (hyperbole), repetition, or any change in their normal order.  Theoretically, a direct narrative could be filmed without any "editing" at all, the camera being turned on at the beginning and turned off at the end.  [Do you know any movies like this?] More common is "interrupted sequence" in which time moves forward from beginning to end, but pieces of time are LEFT OUT (ellipsis)--because they are boring or don't "advance the plot".   There are obviously other ways to represent temporal order in movies, by using flashbacks or flash-forwards, that is, by showing events out of order, or in extreme cases by the wholesale mixing up of normal temporal order (for, hopefully, legitimate creative purposes), or by telling the story backwards.

• So, temporal order can be--• Direct or continuous sequential narrative, or "real time" --just like life.  

    Direct continuous sequential narrative is rare in movies, although some famous examples exist:    High Noon, where clocks on the wall frequently remind us exactly what time it is.

• Interrupted sequence--temporal order is preserved with ellipses but no flashbacks or flash-forwards    Interrupted sequence is by far the most common form of plot presentation.

• Alternating past and present: flashback or flash-forward      Many movies are structured with "framing elements" and begin and end in the "present" with one long flashback        (Amadeus, Lawrence of Arabia [only flashes back, not forward at the end]     Other movies are more complex, with several flashbacks and flash forwards         (Red Violin, Citizen Kane?

• Directors must help the audience know when time has passed between two scenes (temporal ellipsis), and there are a number of ways to do this.  Using a "fade out" followed by a "fade in" is a common method--it gives the audience time to catch its breath.  A long passage of time can be indicated simply by telling the audience: "six years later" (A Beautiful Mind), or "sixteen years later" (The Natural).  In fact, as sophisticated film goers, we are usually very good at inferring when an ellipsis has taken place.  If an actor starts walking up a flight of stairs (The Godfather), we almost expect that the director will use an ellipsis (properly called a "jump cut" in this case) and cut to the actor reaching the top of the stairs; he doesn't want to bore us or waste film.  Nowadays, all pieces of film used in movies are much shorter that they used to be, and cuts are much more frequent. So much have our expectations changed in this respect that we often find that "old movies" move so slowly that they are frustrating to watch.  We are also much more open to complex temporal manipulation and alternating past and present than previous audiences, because, living in the "postmodern" era, we expect actions and events to be out of context and to connect with other actions and events that are seemingly unrelated in time or space. 

• 2.  Temporal duration:  

Screen time (Running Time), Plot time, and Story time are the three kinds of time duration in movies. 

• Screen time (also "running time" or "cheek time"), is the time you actually spend in your seat.   Two other common terms are "filmic time" and "real time."  

• Plot is "everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us" (the diegesis--Greek for "recounted story")   So, plot time is the period of time covered by the events you actually see on the screen (several hours to several years, but almost always longer than screen time). 

• Story is "the set of ALL events in the narrative, both explicit and implicit."  So, story time is the period covered by all the events that you see or know about.  We often makeinferences about events not shown,  In Citizen Kane, for example, we infer that Kane grew up as a spoiled brat, but this is not portrayed, and we only hear about the boarder who gave "worthless" deed to Kane's mother. And what happened to Kane's first wife and son?  In Amadeus we are told many things by Salieri that we are not shown--such as?  (AlsoHoosiers, North by Northwest.)

• 3.  Temporal frequency: 

Scenes may appear more than once, or from multiple points of view--for example, Lola Rennt, the great Japanese film Rashomon