Before now, I have always looked at Narrative as an overall subject with the meaning that the narrative is the story,content and structure in a film/TV show/book. Yet when looking into it, we see that it's much more complicated than that with a narrative's meaning being different to a story's meaning, plot's meaning and narration's meaning.
Narrative is a chain of events which causes a new situation in a film, though cause,effect,time and space, which then brings us to the end of a narrative. It is one situation which is usually put in an order that makes sense. Narrative can use parallelism, showing 2 different stories in parallel which could be used by director to show the difference in two characters lives for example. This can be seen in the beginning of the film 'Pretty Woman' showing the major difference between the prostitutes life and the extremely wealthy high-class man. This gives the audience a clear idea of the different lives and sets the storyline. Parallelism can also concentrate on more than one characters story or narration, making it more complex and not one-sized. Soaps do this all the time, such an example from one 'Eastenders' episode with the director parallelling stories; Lola and Lexi story, Syed and Christan story, Joey's love life and a few more character stories going on around these.
Synopsis for this 'Eastenders' episode - ''Lola's left devastated as her hopes for Lexi's return evaporate. Will anyone step up to help? Syed is worried about Christian when he refuses to go to the police. Can Syed get through to his husband? Lauren makes a surprising move after one too many drinks in R&R.'' BBC,2012.'Eastenders'.'IPlayer',November,1st http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01npf3y/EastEnders_01_11_2012/
As well as parallelism, there are other techniques into telling the story, as long as, as a narrative, it is in an order that makes sense to the viewer. This includes telling it chronologically, beginning to end, or breaking chronology, showing the story in a different order. For example, 'Seven Pounds' shows the climax of the narrative right at the start and then goes back to the start of the narrative along with flashbacks. This convention can entice the viewer as they are at a suspense of the hidden cause. The director also chooses to view an event more than once, as a flashback, showing that this is something Will Smith's character keeps thinking about and is a cause of the narrative. Another great example of this is 'LOST' which uses flashbacks, flash forwards and even flash-sideways, which can be confusing by really gripping to the viewer trying to make sense of the narrative.
This is how the plot is portrayed to the viewer. who's view point we are being told the story from, restricted or unrestricted. This could include being limited to only one character's perspective, such as the 'Rear Window' where we only have knowledge from the man's view, yet this allows the audience to go through the emotion along with the character, not knowing something till they do. Another narration could be showing more than one characters point of view and their individual stories and feeling, showing the audience a wider opinion and view on the relation.Narration can come from someone who is not a character such as a 'voice-of-God' voice over which you mainly find in documentaries. Subjective narration is when the audience are told of the character's life and Objective narration is explaining just the external information, such as what we see and facts of the visuals. An example is 'Life', with David Attenborough explaining what we are witnessing visually and facts of these visuals. A good narration example is 'The Lovely Bones' with Suzie Salmon giving a voice-over through-out which she tells us how she feels, her family feel and tells the story. This is unrestricted narration.
The Opening usually gives the viewer a setup which we have with 'Rear Window' showing the man staring out his window with a broken leg, observing. We also meet his girlfriend. He feels somethings not quite right with one neighbour.
Narrative
Narrative is a chain of events which causes a new situation in a film, though cause,effect,time and space, which then brings us to the end of a narrative. It is one situation which is usually put in an order that makes sense. Narrative can use parallelism, showing 2 different stories in parallel which could be used by director to show the difference in two characters lives for example. This can be seen in the beginning of the film 'Pretty Woman' showing the major difference between the prostitutes life and the extremely wealthy high-class man. This gives the audience a clear idea of the different lives and sets the storyline. Parallelism can also concentrate on more than one characters story or narration, making it more complex and not one-sized. Soaps do this all the time, such an example from one 'Eastenders' episode with the director parallelling stories; Lola and Lexi story, Syed and Christan story, Joey's love life and a few more character stories going on around these. Synopsis for this 'Eastenders' episode - ''Lola's left devastated as her hopes for Lexi's return evaporate. Will anyone step up to help? Syed is worried about Christian when he refuses to go to the police. Can Syed get through to his husband? Lauren makes a surprising move after one too many drinks in R&R.'' BBC,2012.'Eastenders'.'IPlayer',November,1st http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01npf3y/EastEnders_01_11_2012/
As well as parallelism, there are other techniques into telling the story, as long as, as a narrative, it is in an order that makes sense to the viewer. This includes telling it chronologically, beginning to end, or breaking chronology, showing the story in a different order. For example, 'Seven Pounds' shows the climax of the narrative right at the start and then goes back to the start of the narrative along with flashbacks. This convention can entice the viewer as they are at a suspense of the hidden cause. The director also chooses to view an event more than once, as a flashback, showing that this is something Will Smith's character keeps thinking about and is a cause of the narrative. Another great example of this is 'LOST' which uses flashbacks, flash forwards and even flash-sideways, which can be confusing by really gripping to the viewer trying to make sense of the narrative.
proudtobeagunner1,2011.'Seven.Pounds[2008]DvDrip-starting full movie on demand'.'Youtube',Feb,10th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TEO6FdgfC8
Story
The story is the whole series of events, chronology, that occur which the audience may not see. It's everything that happens step-by-step to the characters and within the events. As soon as a shot, sequence, scene is cut within the edit and the narrative doesn't include, say for example, what character A does after visually showing character A shopping in one shop, then the story is not being shown fully to the viewer.
Plot
The plot is how the story is shown visually to the audience, such as flashbacks. the plot can effect audiences in different ways. It controls the time, space and effect. It's up to the plot when to reveal character traits to us which many films do even within the opening titles in 'Rear Window' it introduces us to the man and shows he's had an accident while doing his photography job and that he is a peeping tom, just through the camera shots. Sometimes a plot may repeat story events, as I mentioned about 'Seven Pounds', this is usually to reveal new information which also occurs in 'The Conversation', repeating the sound recording over and over till it's clear.
textthing,2011.'Great movie scenes:episode 9-the conversation'.'Youtube',Nov,8th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoaFl_D0S8w
The screen duration is much shorter than the story duration as a story such as 'Bridesmaids' story duration is over many years from when the two best friends met, as they speak about this, yet the plot duration is under a year, from when she announces she is getting married until they get married, and the screen duration is around an hour and a half.
textthing,2011.'Great movie scenes:episode 9-the conversation'.'Youtube',Nov,8th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoaFl_D0S8w
The screen duration is much shorter than the story duration as a story such as 'Bridesmaids' story duration is over many years from when the two best friends met, as they speak about this, yet the plot duration is under a year, from when she announces she is getting married until they get married, and the screen duration is around an hour and a half. ''The filmmaker builds the plot from the story.The audience builds the story from the plot.'' - (Bordwell & Thompson, 2013, p.75)
Narration
This is how the plot is portrayed to the viewer. who's view point we are being told the story from, restricted or unrestricted. This could include being limited to only one character's perspective, such as the 'Rear Window' where we only have knowledge from the man's view, yet this allows the audience to go through the emotion along with the character, not knowing something till they do. Another narration could be showing more than one characters point of view and their individual stories and feeling, showing the audience a wider opinion and view on the relation.Narration can come from someone who is not a character such as a 'voice-of-God' voice over which you mainly find in documentaries. Subjective narration is when the audience are told of the character's life and Objective narration is explaining just the external information, such as what we see and facts of the visuals. An example is 'Life', with David Attenborough explaining what we are witnessing visually and facts of these visuals. A good narration example is 'The Lovely Bones' with Suzie Salmon giving a voice-over through-out which she tells us how she feels, her family feel and tells the story. This is unrestricted narration.Step - By - Step for Narrative.
A typical narrative goes through the same traits to get to the conclusion. I will use Rear Window as an example.
The Opening usually gives the viewer a setup which we have with 'Rear Window' showing the man staring out his window with a broken leg, observing. We also meet his girlfriend. He feels somethings not quite right with one neighbour.
The Development 'the character learns something on the course of action' & 'takes steps to achieve an object or condition' - Bordwell & Thompson, Film Art, p85. This occurs in 'Rear Window' with the man seeing the curious neighbours wife go missing and takes action to find out where she's gone as he believes he has killed her. This allows the viewer to have some sort of expectation of the climax. The climax however may have only a few different outcomes available, with in this case, if the neighbour is caught or if he kills the man and doesn't get found out. Another good example is 'The boy in the striped Pyjamas', with the options being if the boys survive or if the dad is just too late to save them. Films with a classic format often have a closure, closing the story which with 'Rear Window' being an old film, it has this closure with the man being arrested and everyone happy. Whereas 'The boy in the striped pyjamas', there is no closure, the audience just know the boys are dead and it's the end. I think this happens much more in modern day films as they either wants the viewer to use imagination or to portray a message such as there was no happy endings in the war so why would there be in the film.
Bordwell.D & Thompson.K (2013) Film Art. p.75
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| Final shot in 'The boy in the striped Pyjamas'. |
Bordwell.D & Thompson.K (2013) Film Art. p.75
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