Showing posts with label Narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Narrative. Show all posts

Thursday, 10 November 2016

Breif Outline of my Plot

The beginning of my narrative will start of as a montage of events of a normal day and a car crash at the end. The main protagonist instantly wakes up and assumes he just had a nightmare. As the character gets up a heads downstairs the beginning credits will appear. The main character then gets himself some breakfast and as he runs the tap to get a drink, he has a small flashback of his 'dream'. As he thinks nothing of it he continues to get himself a drink and puts the glass on the table. He then accidentally knocks the glass over causing the drink to spill on the floor and as the drink is in free fall time slows down and he has another flashback of the 'dream'. Again he doesn't really realise what is going on so he continues his normal day of life and heads back to his room. On his way to his room he trips over a book and once again he has another flashback of him tripping and falling down the stairs but as he goes back to reality he prevents himself from falling down the stairs as he knew what was going to happen. The protagonist picks up the book and the front cover has the woulds deja vu on it, he then starts to realise that his dream is coming to true. He then grabs his laptop and starts researching about his condition. As he researches he finds out that he can try and simulate his dream to remember the rest of his dream before it happens and save whoever gets hit by a car. As he starts to remember parts of his dream he finds out that the event is close to his house as he recognises street sign in his vision. He the runs out of his house and looks at his watch to see how much time he has left to save the person from being hit by a car. He gets to the same street sign in his vision and has a small flashback to prove it was the same street sign. As he has nothing else to go on so he looks around frantically to see if he can see the car but as he looks around someone bumps into him with headphones on and walks past him. As the main character then realises that this person was the guy that gets hit. He then runs to try and catch him up but before he catches up, he sees the car that hits him turn into the road he is on. As the main protagonist attempts to call for the character with the headphones he obviously doesn't hear him or the car. The character with headphones starts to cross the road without looking and the car continues to build up speed. This is then the moment where the character decides to be the hero and save him risking his own life or the villain by letting it happen, but before he makes a decision it cuts to black and all you hear is a car breaking and someone being hit leaving the audience to decide what happened and who died.

Monday, 7 November 2016

The Genre of my production

From reading my narrative I would suggest that my short film will fall into the thriller genre due to the following conventions


  • The aim of a thriller is to create suspense and excitement for the audience
  • The narrative revolves around an investigation or enigma
  • The hero is the only one that is able to solve the enigma
  • The hero is often an outsider, isolated and secretive but moral
  • A lot of the cinematography includes extreme close ups to show emotion of the protagonist
Although my narrative follows some of the conventions I think it would likely be an unconventional thriller as it is not centred around violence, except from the end and it doesn't have many characters only a protagonist.

Friday, 14 October 2016

Narrative Ending

For the ending of my narrative I have came up with a two slightly different ideas however as of now I'm unsure with what one to go with.
  1. It ends as the protagonist with a decision whether to risk his life to save someone from a car crash, then it cuts to black before he makes a decision and you hear the noise of a car breaking and someone being hit, leaving the audience to decide who got hit by the car.
  2. the protagonist remembers the location where the crash happened and waits to try and save who he saw in his dream. After a while no one turns up so he thinks that his premonition was fake and wakes home and as he crosses the road he gets hit and it turns out the person he saw get hit was himself.
To decide I could create an questionnaire to ask people which they think is best

Update
Ive decided to with 1 as i feel this will be easier to film as I wouldn't actually have to film someone getting hit by a car also it would create more enigmas as the audience wouldn't know who gets hit. 

Friday, 23 September 2016

Narrative Theories

Todorov- equilibrium/disequilibrium
He suggested that the conventional narratives have 5 stages

  1. A state of equilibrium(stability) at the start
  2. A disruption of the equilibrium by some action
  3. A recognition that there has been a disruption
  4. An attempt to repair the disruption
  5. A reinstatement of the equilibrium

Propp- character types
He suggested that every narrative has 8 different character types













Barthes - enigma codes
He suggest that narratives should have enigma codes to keep the audience guessing and creating a puzzle for the audience

Strauss-binary oppositions
His theory was that binary oppositions were needed in a narrative, like heros and villans(Star wars for example)

Cameron -modular narratives
Mentioned media product having multiple narratives like Anachronic, Forking-Path, Episodic and Split Screen.

Freytag -narrative pyramid.
His pyrimad shows the pace of a narrative and the amount of tension.
Image result for Freytag -narrative pyramid.
For my narrative the narrative theories that will relate to my short film are Freytag's pyrimad and Todorov, as my production will start of as the protagonist not really realizing what is going on and then beginning to realize he saw visions of his future. Then he will try to prevent things and events from happening and finally the protagonist will try to change his own fate possibly leading to his demise. Fretag's pyrimad would work well with my narrative as the tension gradually builds up until the ending where the protagonist will resolve the problem or not.