Narrative Essay

In my AS coursework I had to create a film opening which followed the work of other previous pieces, by looking at their conventions, especially through the use of narrative. My film opening was called ‘Delusion’ and was a drama, looking at the scene at where the main character had found herself dead, looking at her own body. The narrative was a key part as it allowed the audience to understand what was happening in the film.

Strauss was a major influence for us in our film opening. His theory is about how the stories reflect values and beliefs of a culture. He would usually expect binary opposites in a film to support this, which are two characters which are opposite from each other. We used this in our film opening where we had the girl who was weak, laying on the floor, supported by the strong male who was looking after her, being seen as a hero. This could also fit in with the male and female stereotype, especially within films where the male is the hero. You have empathy for the girl who is seen as weak, because she is unable to help herself, however you feel happy for the male who has helped her out. By following the traditional male and female stereotypes, it allows the audience to be able to relate to previous films they have seen of a similar genre.

Another theorist who we looked at was Propp, this theory uses 7 different characters, so that the audience is able to easily be able to identify the characters. I previously spoke about how we used the weak and the heroes in the previous paragraphs. The 7 different characters who are identified are heroes, villains, mentors, dispatchers, false heroes, and the princess (who is the damsel in distress). In our short film opening we used three of these characters. This included the hero, who was the male character which went to save the weak, a helper who was a woman who went along with the male to help out, but however was viewed as more of a side hero, rather than the main cause of help and finally we featured the “princess” who was seen as the weak character who needed help. By following this theory by Propp it allowed our film opening to follow the classic conventions of a narrative and make it easy for the watchers to understand.

Todorov was a big influence in our film opening, because he allowed us to see how a typical film was laid out. He believes that most stories follow the same path, this includes an equilibrium, a disruption, realisation, restored order and then back to equilibrium again. He believes that the characters need to be transformed through the progress of disruption. In my film opening I used this to create a path which was easy to understand and followed his conventions to create a typical film opening. At the beginning of the film opening there was the equilibrium because it was calm as the young girl exited the train station and was walking down the road. However, the disruption hit when she saw her dead body, and then realised what happened. I do not feel as though there was another equilibrium or it was restored to order, this is because it was only a short film opening and it was left on a cliff hanger. However, if the whole film would be been created then I feel that there would have been.

Barthes was the final person who we looked at for influence on our film opening. He used multiple different codes to explain how a film was made. Enigma codes were used in our text, for example when the main character comes out of the train station and is walking towards the crime scene you can see that there is a small amount of blood on her face. As she gets closer to the crime scene the blood and wounds on her face become more apparent, making the viewer become confused at what has happened, and they do not know until they have seen the body. As well as this, at the end the girl says “maybe this is karma slowly getting back at me for the incident” this makes the audience know that she has done something bad, but they are unsure on what she has done.

In conclusion I feel as though I created a successful narrative by following the theorists ideas and conventions, to create a film opening which relates to those which are around at the moment.