Narrative

1. Narrative • The narrative or “telling of a story” is the part of the movie that people respond most to. • This chapter hopes to teach you to analyze the narrative in more precise and conscious detail.

2. Dramatic Structure • Exposition –characters, setting, basic conflict • Rising Actions- secondary conflicts • Climax- turning point (protagonist begins to overpower the antagonist) • Falling Actions- principal conflict moves toward resolution • Resolution- everything made clear, no more questions or surprises

3. Story • The movie’s STORY is everything explicitly presented on the screen PLUS all the events that are implicit or that we infer to have happened but are not presented on screen.

4. Plot • A structure for presenting everything we see and hear in a film.

5. Diegetic Elements • All of the events, characters, objects settings and sounds that form the world in which the story occurs.

6. Nondiegetic Elements • Something that we see and hear on the screen that comes from outside the world of the story (including background music, titles, credits and voice-over narration).

7. Order • Bringing order to the plot is one of the most fundamental decisions the filmmaker must make. • Unlike story order which flows chronologically, plot order can be manipulated into a nonchronological sequence to emphasize importance or meaning.

8. Events • Hubs- Major events or branching points in a plot • Satellites- minor plot events that add texture and complexity to characters and events but are not essential elements of the narrative.

9. Duration • Story duration- the amount of time the implied story takes to occur • Plot duration- the elapsed time of the events within the story explicitly presented • Screen duration- length of movie

10. Characters • Protagonist- central figure (sometimes is the hero, does not have to be a good guy…can be a bad guy who struggles with the oppostion.) • Antagonist- opposes the protagonist, provokes the actions of the protagonist • Round characters- three-dimensional, possess several traits • Flat characters- posses one or very few traits.

11. Setting • Time and place in which the story occurs. Not only establishes date, city or country but also the characters’ social, educational, and cultural backgrounds.

12. Scope • Related to duration and setting. • The overall range is time and place of the movie’s story. For example, a war movie might be limited in scope to the story of a single battle. In addition, the film The Longest Day, relates the D-Day invasion with a broad scope of what is happening in 4 separate countries on the same day.

13. Narrator • Narration literally means telling a story and also implies there will be a storyteller or “narrator”. • In a movie the camera itself can be both a visual recorder and narrator, showing us what the director wants us to see.

14. Forms of visual narration • Omniscient- unrestricted, third-person point of view, gives us all aspects if the movie’s actions and characters. • Restricted - a narration that reveals information to the audience only as a specific character learns of it. (The movie Hoodwinked has several restricted narrations )