Tuesday 30 September 2014

What is the difference between narrative and a story?

Most people get the concept of narrative and a story confused because they are thought to be the same thing, however a narrative is the way the director organizes the events together so that they will be presented in the best way for an audience to see where as a story is a sequence of events which alternatively is seen as the plot.

Therefore if you had to analyse a narrative you would need to work out how the director had organized the series of events throughout a story, there are three different ways of analysing a narrative which are:

Technical codes:
This varies from the camera angle to the shot framing to then what editing has been used within the shot. Camera angle is important because if it is looking down on someone it could signify that the character has low authority within the story or if the camera is looking up at the camera it could signify that you should be intimidated by the character on the screen. Shot framing is important because if a close up was to be used it normally connotes that the object or person is significant to what is about to happen or further on. Lastly the editing can be important as part of the editing process could be the lighting which can show the difference between a pure character by there being a lot of natural lighting and the whole shot to be very bright and an eerie character where the shot is very dark and it has a lot of editing.

Verbal Codes:
The way in which language has been used whether it is written or spoken within a scene. Only the best narratives will show rather than explaining to the audience, which gives the best effect as it leaves the audience in suspense.

Symbolic Codes:
These are what the audience spots out themselves and recognizes to being important to the story line, which they also could give meaning too. So in a short term you could see them as the clues of the narrative.

Structure:
Tzvetan Todorov, a Russian Theorist came up with the idea of the three part structure, which is where it firstly begins with the Equilibrium (where everything is balanced) then secondly goes onto Dis-equilibrium (which disrupts the first) then lastly the New Equilibrium (where everything is restored and resulted).

Character:
Once Vladimir Propp has investigated Tzvetan Todorov's theory he came up with the theory that there can only be a certain amount of characters, otherwise it becomes over complicated and it would not be easy to recognize the villain and hero within a narrative. The characters that he said had to be within most or all narratives were the protagonist, the antagonist, the heroine, father, helper, doner and the mentor.

1 comment:

  1. Katy make sure you include Levi-Strauss as this will help you with your Titanic Essay

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