Film Studies: Forms

1. Film Studies: Forms Week Five Narrative: Form, Structure, Development

2. A Definition: A narrative is a chain of events in cause-effect relations occurring in time and space.

3. Roland Barthes: “Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting,…cinema, comics, news items, conversation…Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, and transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself.” Roland Barthes, Image – Music – Text (London: Fontana, 1977), p.79.

4. Lecture Structure • Approaches to understanding the common properties of all narratives • The general features of one type of narrative: The Classical Hollywood Cinema • Ways of thinking about the narratives of individualfilms

5. Structuralist Approaches to Narrative 2 Basic premises of Structuralism: • Although many thousands of different stories exist, which can be told through a number of narrative media, all stories share certain common qualities. • These qualities, which are not immediately obvious, take the form of underlying structures, which can be extracted by means of analysing individual stories, or groups of stories.

6. Bordwell and Thompson’s ‘Neoformalism’ • A focus on Narration Rather than Narrative • Narration as a Process • Concerned with structure and formal features… • …but also with how audiences engage with these

7. David Bordwell: “A good theory [of narration] would have to include, at least, categories and propositions pertaining to the artwork’s structure, the perceiver’s relation to the work, and the broader functions of the work.” David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (USA: Routledge, 1985), p.xii.

8. Bordwell and Thompson’s ‘Neoformalism’ • A focus on Narration Rather than Narrative • Narration as a Process • Concerned with structure and formal features… • …but also with how audiences engage with these

9. The Classical Hollywood Cinema Eight Narrative Conventions: • Human centred • Goal oriented protagonists • Built on conflict and opposition • Actions and events are linked in a chain of cause and effect • A double plot-line (adventure and romance plots) • Motivation and action is as clear as possible • There tends to be an omniscient narration • Dominated by a strong sense of closure

10. Common Plot Patterns 1 • Sid Field’s Three Act Structure: • Act one: The setup • Act two: The conflict • Act three: The resolution

11. Common Plot Patterns 2 • Kristin Thompson’s Four Act Structure: • Act one: The setup • Act two: The complicating action • Act three: The development • Act four: The climax

12. The Plot/Story Distinction • This is a useful distinction for three main reasons: • It helps move us from a general consideration of narrative to the criticism of specific films. 2. It also helps us to distinguish between the formal patterning of the film and the mental/perceptual activity of the spectator. 3. It helps us to understand the organisation of film space and film time, both generally and in terms of specific films.

13. Plot/Story/Diegesis 1 • Plot: All the events that are directly presented to us, including their causal relations, chronological order, duration, frequency, and spatial locations. • Story: All the events that we see and hear, plus all those that we infer or assume to have occurred, arranged in their presumed causal relations, chronological order, duration, frequency, and spatial locations. • Diegesis: The world of the film’s story. The diegesis includes events that are presumed to have occurred and spaces not shown onscreen.

14. Plot/Story/Diegesis 2

15. Narrative: Time and Space • Narrative time • Order • Duration • Story duration • Plot duration • Screen duration • Frequency • Narrative space • Story space and plot space

16. Why create a segmentation? • There are two main reasons: • Segmentation helps us to identify a film’s large formal units. • Segmentation helps us to identify narrative patterns.

17. The Five Ss • Shot • Scene • Sequence • Sequence-shot • Segment

18. How do we define a segment? Four criteria: • The beginnings and endings of segments are often signalled by cinematic marks of punctuation • A segment is often defined by unities of time, place, and action • Segments often contain formal symmetry • Perception of a formal unity as defined in the context of the film as a whole

19. Some Questions: • What is the central character’s desire that sets the narrative in motion? • How is this desire opposed/thwarted? • Is the motivation clear and logical? • In what ways do actions have effects? On whom? • Where do the film’s acts begin? At what moments do the film’s turning points occur? • What deadlines and appointments are there? How do these add clarity and structure to the narrative?