Narrative as a Formal System

1. Narrative as a Formal System

2. Introduction to Narrative Form • Narrative is a fundamental way that humans make sense of the world • Narrative form is most common in fictional films, but can appear in other basic types of film, like documentary

3. Introduction to Narrative Form • Because stories are all around us, we go to a narrative film with definite expectations. • We assume there will be characters and some action that will involve them with one another. • We expect a series of events that will connect in some way.

4. Introduction to Narrative Form • We expect that conflicts will arise and achieve a climax--a resolution, or a new perspective of them. • As the viewer watches the film, they pick up on cues, remember information, anticipates what will happen next, and participates in the creation of the film’s form.

5. Introduction to Narrative Form • The film shapes expectations by arousing curiosity, suspense, and surprise. • The ending satisfies or cheats the viewer’s expectations formed by the film as a whole. • The ending may activate memory by cueing the viewer to review earlier events with a new understanding.

6. Introduction to Narrative Form • As we examine narrative form, notice how it engages the viewer in a dynamic activity.

7. What is Narrative?

8. What is Narrative? • A chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space. • Narrative is what we usually mean when we say story, but story has a more specific meaning in the context of film. • The three aspects of narrative are: Causality, Time, and Space.

9. What is Narrative? • Another formal principle that may affect the film is parallelism, which creates a similarity among different elements. • A narrative may cue us to compare characters, settings, situations, times of day or any other elements.

10. What is Narrative? • Parallelism allows films to become richer and more complex than if it focused on one character.

11. Story and Plot • We make sense of a narrative by identifying its events and linking them by cause and effect, time, and space. • Also, we often infer events that are not explicitly presented. • We recognize the presence of material that is extraneous to the story world.

12. Story • The set of all the events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly shown and those the viewer infers, constitutes the story. • The story includes events clearly shown as well as events not shown, but presumed by the viewer. • The total world of the story is called diegesis.

13. Plot • Plot is used to describe everything the viewer sees and hears in the film. • The plot includes all of the story events shown. • The plot includes added nondiegetic material, like credits and music.

14. Story and Plot • Story and plot overlap in parts and differ in others: • Clearly shown events are a part of story and plot. • The story goes beyond the plot by suggesting events we don’t see. • The plot presents nondiegetic images and sounds that may affect our understanding of the story. See Diagram on next slide:

15. Story and Plot

16. Story and Plot Perspectives • From the perspective of the filmmaker, the story is the sum total of all the events in the narrative. • The filmmaker presents some of these events, making them part of the plot, and hints at others. • The filmmaker can then add nondiegetic material to make a story into a plot.

17. Story and Plot Perspectives • For the viewer, there is only the plot. • We create the story in our minds from the cues in the plot. • We also recognize the added nondiegetic material.

18. Cause and Effect • If narrative depends so much on cause and effect what kinds of things can function as causes in a narrative?

19. Cause and Effect • Usually the sources of cause and effect are characters. • Most often characters are people. • By causing and reacting to events, characters play roles within the film’s narrative system. • Characters create causes and register effects; they make things happen and react to the twists and turns of events.

20. Cause and Effect • A “complex” character is made up of several different traits, which play a role in the narrative. • A character that is “complex” or “well developed” has many traits that interact with each other. • A minor character my only have one or two traits.

21. Cause and Effect • Other elements like disasters and nature can originate cause and effect too. • What are some examples? • Still, once these natural occurrences set the situation up, human traits, desires and goals take over to develop the narrative.

22. Cause and Effect • In general, the viewer actively seeks to connect events by means of cause and effect. • Given an event, we tend to think how it was caused and what it might cause. • This is causal motivation.

23. Cause and Effect • The detective film is a good example of cause and effect; story and plot. • A murder is committed, we know the effect but not the causes- the killer, the reason, the method. • Mystery depends on curiosity, our desire to know what happened before the plot action begins.

24. Cause and Effect • It is the detective’s job to discover the missing causes- to name the killer, their reason and the method. • In the mystery film, the climax is the revelation of earlier events in the story which we did not see.

25. Cause and Effect • The plot may also present causes but withhold story effects, creating suspense and uncertainty in the viewer. • The is the most disruptive at the end of the film and can leave a film open ended.

26. Time • Causes and their effects are basic to narrative, but they take place in time. • While watching a film the viewer constructs story time from what the plot presents.

27. Time • The plot may present events out of chronological order. • Most plot do not show every detail from beginning to end. • The story duration containing irrelevant parts is usually skipped. • The plot may present the same event more than once.

28. Time • These options mean when making the story from the plot the viewer puts events in chronological order and assigns them some duration and frequency.

29. Time • The three main aspects of time in narrative form are: • Order • Duration • Frequency

30. Temporal Order • Temporal Order involves the sequence in which the chronological events of the story are arranged in the plot. • Flashbacks and Flashforwards illustrate Order.

31. Temporal Order • A flashback is simply a part of the story the plot presents out of chronological order. • From the plot order we infer the story order. • If the story order is ABCD, then a flashback could show the story like DABC.

32. Temporal Order • Similarly, a flashforward moves from present to future than back to present, ABDC.

33. Temporal Order • Temporal Duration involves the time span presented in the plot and assumed to operate in the story. • Story duration • Plot duration • Screen duration

34. Temporal Duration • Story duration includes all relevant events not shown in the plot. • A film’s plot selects certain stretches of story duration. • The sum of all these pieces of story duration produces plot duration.

35. Temporal Order • There is also screen duration, the time it takes to watch a film. • The relationship among these is complex and different in every film, but the filmmaker can change screen duration independently from story or plot duration.

36. Temporal Order • Just as plot duration selects from story duration, screen duration selects from plot duration. • Screen duration can expand story time with editing, or compress it with a rapid series of shots like a montage.

37. Time • Temporal Frequency involves the number of times any story event is shown in the plot • Normally, a story event is shown only once in a plot, but sometimes a single story event may be shown many times. • Examples: Run Lola Run

38. Time • The various ways that a film’s plot may manipulate story order, duration, and frequency illustrate how the spectator must actively participate in making sense of the narrative film.

39. Time • The plot supplies cues about chronological sequence, the time span of actions,and the number of times an event occurs and it is up to the viewer to make assumptions and inferences and to form expectations.

40. Time • Often we justify changes of time because of cause and effect. • A flashback is due to an event that causes someone to remember the past. • The plot will skip over years of story duration if they don’t contain important information • The repetition of actions may communicate major causes very clearly to the viewer.

41. Space • Normally, the place of the story action is also that of the plot, but sometimes the viewer must imagine other spaces. • Space can also become the basis for the plot pattern. This is common if the action is confined to a single place.

42. Openings • The opening of a film provides a basis for what is to come and introduces us into the narrative. • Sometimes, the plot will seek to arouse curiosity by bringing us into a series of actions that has already started. • This is called opening in media res, or in the middle of things. • Example: The Usual Suspects

43. Openings • Sometimes, the film begins by telling us about the characters and their situations before any major actions occur. • Some of the actions that took place before the plot started will be stated or suggested so that we can start to connect the whole story. • Example: Amelie

44. Openings • The part of the plot that lays out story events and character traits important in the opening situation is called the exposition. • In general, the opening raises our expectations by setting up a specific range of possible causes for and effects of what we see.

45. Patterns of Development • As the plot proceeds, the causes and effects will define narrower patterns of development. • Most patterns of development depend heavily on the ways that causes and effects create a change in a character’s situation.

46. Patterns of Development • The most common pattern is a change in knowledge. • Often, a character learns something in the course of the action, with the most important knowledge coming at the final point of the plot.

47. Patterns of Development • A very common pattern of development is the goal-oriented plot, in which a character wants to gain a desired object or achieve a desired state of affairs. • Plots based on searches would be an example.

48. Patterns of Development • A variation of the goal-oriented plot pattern is the investigation, typical of detective films. • The protagonists goal is not an object , but information.

49. Patterns of Development • Time or space can also make plot patterns. • A situation in the present may cause a series of flashbacks showing how events led up to the present situation.

50. Patterns of Development • The plot may also create a specific duration for the action, a deadline. • Any given plot can combine these patterns. • Many films using a journey pattern involve deadlines.