NARRATIVE essay

The production I produced in relation to a Narrative was the ‘Thriller’ opening as I was able to make use of linear structure, where the events in the film would be told in a chronological order of beginning, middle and 

end.

The storyline and concept of the Thriller, involved a male character who had the ‘villain’ character role as he kidnaps a female who the audience believe to be as the ‘victim’ who later on comes out as the ‘hero’. The villain character in this film struggles against the hero because he believes that the other character has something of his that would ruin him. Propp does suggest that when an audience reads a media text it deploys its knowledge of character types in order to decode the meaning of text. Similarly to a connotation or stereotype, for example, the villain in my Thriller was dressed in all black and the particular camera shot used (extreme close up, it night vision) helped to construct this connotation.

Where I had used a linear structure I made use of Todorov’s concept of ‘Equilibrium’ (norm state at the beginning) where the innocent ‘victim’ character was walking home. This was followed on by ‘Dis-equilibrium’ where conflict was introduced by the mysterious phone calls, the female being followed home, then the she is taken. This then results in ‘New Equilibrium’ (the resolution) where the conflict is then resolved and the narrative strands are tied together. This would be evident in my Thriller at the end of the film, where villain is captured.

In order to create enigma, that Barthes identifies as one of the five narrative codes in which the audience use to decode texts, I made use of Narrative style of ‘objective point of view’ where the viewer is treated as the observer who watches from omniscient vantage points for example keeping the camera still whilst the subject moves towards or away from it. I used this when the female character was being followed home, where I took many shots of the female actor walking away from the camera towards an alley way and then her walking towards the camera nearer to the house. 

Similarly I made use of ‘Invisible editing’ which is used in Hollywood, where I created shots that supported the narrative rather than dominating the narrative enabling the storyline and characters being the main focal point. Through doing this I was able to achieve the technique which gives the impression that the edits are always motivated by the events in ‘reality’ that the camera is recording rather than the result of a desire to tell a story, for example the long takes where the female was walking from stairs down towards the door where she was taken.

Further on I did also make use of mis-en-scene in order to convey understanding and relationship in single shots as this helped a lot with creating enigma. Also when doing this, I found the composition is important as this shows importance of the object and character depending on whether the object is shot from a high or low angle and how much screen time it has.

Even though, Barthes identified the use of narrative codes, Levi-Strauss (structuralist) argued that the narrative structures have binary opposites (the symbolic) for example, good vs evil which is evident in my thriller piece with the conflict between the two different types of characters of being the good (victim/hero) to the bad (villain), also these characters where female vs male.

To conclude, I believe that I successfully met the important aspects that create a strong narrative relating specifically to the genre of a ‘Thriller’ mainly because I was able to connect my ideas well to the theorists I have mentioned.