Applying VLADIMIR PROPP (Draft)

Fairy tales like 'Red Riding Hood' follow this theory to the core having every character from the hero to the princesses father. His idea is all about the characters involved that are explained below

The Hero - (A character on a mission to go through events to fulfil his or her destiny)
                  The final character to meet their demise while destorying the book in the process.

The Villain - (Driven by evil to prevent the hero for completing their tasks)
                     An uncompleted book written by the philosopher that sends readers into an unhealthy                            state of depression.

The Doner - (Aids the hero by giving them help)
                    The character who ended their life by supplying the book to the hero.

The Dispatcher - (Sends the hero on their quest)
                           The investigator who originally stumbles across the book.

The false hero - (Appears to be good but tries to trick the hero)
                          The creator of the book - the philosopher.

The helper

Applying LEVI-STRAUSS

He has created an idea of opposites in films. Good vs Evil, Man vs Machines, Light vs Dark, Men vs Women. A great example for understanding Levi-Strauss would be Batman: The Dark Knight - you have the main hero 'Batman' working against the evil protagonist 'Joker'.

As i don't have any direct opposite evil forces i find it difficult to apply this theory to my narrative but the idea of good vs evil can work. The situation of a devil on one shoulder telling people to read the book and trying to egg them on - and an angel on the other shoulder advising them not to read the book incase of the horrible consequences.

        "Curiosity killed the cat."

Typically this idea of opposites works well with horror as there is a main good character trying to fend off for their lives against the main evil character (Scream).

Applying TZVETAN TODOROV

Todorov believed that most stories follow a sequence of events that are created to make everything back to how they were originally at the beginning of the film.

 "Equilibrium - a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced."

       The definition above is from google and it states that everything is as normal and nothing out of the ordinary is happening or dramatic problems exist. The narrative story applies well his theory as a small population are affected by a books influence into a state of dis-equilibrium.


Stable Equilibrium - Everyone is living their own happy natural lives while a philosopher is creating a new book ready to publish.

Disrupted Equilibrium - Philosopher has heart-attack mid creation of the book and multiple un-answered deaths occur soon after.

Quest to restore equilibrium - Friends of an investigator and friends of friends ect. are handed the book before questionable death on an answer to solve the deaths (Evil Dead is a great example).

Climax - The last reader of the unpublished book accidentally creates a house fire in which the book is destroyed and never found again.

Resolution - People never find the answer to the unexplainable deaths but link all deaths to the book. Once again people live their regular lives without the lives of the recently deceased.

Is there more to Narrative?

Narrative has many other parts to it. Here's an introduction to Story and Plot.

The narrative is the overall experience of a film. It includes all scenes screened and viewed directly by the audience and the scenes created in the heads of the audience, but not necessarily depicted within the footage, this allows the director to show the scale of time without having to depict every second.
    For example if you wanted to include burning a building down you might have a shot of: 

The preparation (Pouring oils and or alcohol on objects).

A match being struck and thrown on the floor.  

Ashes floating in the air.

 The audience would add up all the parts in between in their heads that the character has set alight to the building. But the plot is only the scenes the audience have seen directly - the scenes i mentioned without the scenes mentally added.

Narrative is defined as

 “a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship occurring in time"

-(Bordwell & Thompson, Film Art, 1980).

Diegesis - The internal world created by the story that the characters themselves experience and encounter.

Narrative Range

Unrestricted narration – A narrative which has no limits to the information that is

presented i.e. a news bulletin.

Restricted narration – only offers minimal information regarding the narrative i.e.

Thrillers

The news won't hide any information because they are not afraid of directly upsetting anyone (unless it is a national tragic event) so they will give everyone all of what is known without any missing links from many perspectives. Whereas the idea of restricted narration is hiding pieces of the puzzle and either allowing the audience to figure out what happened by themselves or keeping up the suspense to keep their audience engaged. It could also be because you follow a certain character through their life.   

Narrative Depth

Subjective character identification – The viewer is given unique access to what a range of characters see and do.

Objective character identification – The viewer is given unique access to a

character’s point of view such as seeing things from the character’s mind, dreams,

fantasies or memories. 

Then it can be more complex:

Modular Narratives “articulate a sense of time as divisible and subject to manipulation”.

Cameron has identified four different types of modular narrative:

• Anachronic.
• Forking-Path.
• Episodic.
• Split Screen.

Anachronic  - Modular narratives involve the use of flashbacks and/or flashforwards, with no clear dominance between any of the narrative threads. These narratives also often repeat scenes directly or via a different perspective. Examples include: Pulp Fiction and Memento.

Forking-path -  Narratives juxtapose alternative versions of a story, showing the possible outcomes that might result from small changes in a single event or group of events. The forking-path narrative introduces a number of plotlines that usually contradict one another. Examples include Groundhog Day, How I Met Your Mother and Run Lola Run 

Episodic  - Narratives are organised as an abstract series or narrative anthology.Abstract series type of modular narrative is characterized by the operation of a nonnarrative formal system which appears to dictate (or at least overlay) the organization of narrative elements such as a sequence of numbers or the alphabet.Anthology consists of a series of shorter tales which are apparently disconnected but share a random similarity, such as all ‘episodes’ being survivors of a shipwreck. Various Simpsons episodes and How I Met Your Mother.

Split screen - Narratives are different from the other types of modular narrative discussed here, because their modularity is articulated along spatial rather than temporal lines. These films divide the screen into two or more frames, juxtaposing events within the same visual field, in a sustained fashion. Examples includeTimecode.