Group Narrative - Miss Georgiou

What is the purpose of a narrative?

A narrative is a sequence of connected events that tells a story, this can be presented to a reader or listener in a sequence of written or spoken words, or in a sequence of moving pictures.  Narratives can be organised in a number of thematic and/or formal/stylistic categories: non-fiction (e.g. New Journalism, creative non-fiction, biographies, and historiography); fictionalised accounts of historical events (e.g. anecdotes, myths, and legends); and fiction proper (i.e. literature , such as short stories and novels, and sometimes in poetry and drama.           

How did you and your group discuss your individual ideas?

In our groups we all talked about our own ideas and discussed how the opening would go, such as what features we would use and we concluded as to what the best opening would be. We took inspiration from all narratives and took aspects from all the ideas within the group, we decided to go with Amber's idea as it was unique and very well planned, we however added conventional techniques from each of our groups such as the use of hidden identity and extreme close ups in Lily's idea and the strong use of lighting and facial expressions in my narrative.

 

Group 1 Member, Lily: Lily's narrative idea was the idea we were initially going to choose. The film is about an arsonist who was abused as a child and was a burns victim, he uses fire to kill all his victims, we were all interested in the use of make up and iconography within this narrative as there would be several instances of people who had been burnt.  

Group 2 Member, Amber: Amber's idea is the idea we decided to choose, we liked how unique it was and we agreed that examiners would enjoy this as it would be different to other clips whilst maintaining the conventions of a thriller film. Her idea was about a woman who gets jilted at the alter, desperate for revenge she kills everyone close to her ex-fiancée and eventually plotting the death of him. 

Group 3 Member, Jazz: My group narrative had several aspects used within the opening sequence, the use of hidden identity and the motif of the colour red will be used to create tension. The use of unconventional characters was taken from my narrative as this meant our thriller would be distinct and unique which resultantly will mean the examiner will be more interested in ours.

Define the 3 theories

There are several theories from different people that claim makes up a good narrative.

Vladimir Propp had the idea that characters are the most important factor towards telling a story within a film however this idea generally is only relevant in children's films and other genres but most characters do not link to the thriller genre. There are 8 characters that Vladimir says make up a movie:

The Hero
The Villain
The Donor
The Dispatcher
The False Hero
The Helper
The Princess
The Father

Tzvetan Todorov had a theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium within narratives.

The 5 stages of the narratives were:

A state of equilibrium
A disruption of that order
A recognition of disruption
An attempt to repair disruption
A restoration of equilibrium

Erving Goffman's theory suggests that there are four main types of character that make up a narrative.

The protagonist
The deuteragonist
The bit player
The fool