FILM STUDIES

NARRATIVE
 YOU Principles of narrative construction

WILL
-
Narrative theory
-
The flow of story information

LEARN
NARRATIVE form
Principles of Narra/ve Form
What is Narra*ve?
Telling the Story
How Would You Tell the Story?
Plot and Story
Cause and Effect (Causality)
Time
Space
Openings, Closings, and PaEerns of Development
NARRATIVE form
Narra/on: The Flow of Story Informa/on
Range of Story Informa*on: Restricted or unrestricted?
Depth of Story Informa*on: Objec*ve or Subjec*ve?
The Narrator
A chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in
time and space.
Narratives present us with a series of events in ways that
imply connections between one event and the next.
Narrative construction relies on the viewer to pick up cues,
anticipate action and recall information. narrative may also
make use of parallelism.
Narrative is integral to the human experience of the world.
We use stories to make sense of and to create meanings of
our otherwise chaotic experiences. In films, stories are
ordered and shaped into events.
Narration relies on
• Causality
• Time
• Space

In Films, stories are ordered, and

shaped into events. Events are part
of a pattern of cause and effect.

Narrative may also make use of

PARALLELISM
Plot
Refers to the sequencing of events as shown in a given film. It
designates the way narrative events are arranged in the film.
All events that are directly presented to us include their causal
relations, chronological order, duration, frequency and spatial
locations.
Story
Story designates the larger set of events of which the plot is a
subset. Any given narrative points beyond itself to imply a set of
events that are not directly portrayed, as well as those that are
shown. Story refers to the comprehensive set of all events, shown
or implied, that make up the narrative. It is also the viewer’s
imaginary construction or inference of all the events in the
narrative.
 Narrative depends heavily on cause and effect, with

cause and effect characters being the agent. Audience will look for
causal motivation. this often involves the planting of
information in advance of a scene. The plot may
present causes but withhold story effects, prompting
suspense and uncertainty in the viewer. This
withholding of effect is most disruptive if applied at
the end of the film.
time
Cause and their effect are basic to narrative, but they
take place in TIME.
Chronological order/Temporal Order
Temporal Duration
Temporal Frequency
TEMPORAL ORDER
How are events sequenced?

Filmmakers can choose to

present events out of story
order.

A flashback usually don’t

confuse us because we
mentally rearrange the
events into chronological
order.
TEMPORAL duration
There is a sometimes complex relationship between story
duration, plot duration, and screen duration. At a more
specific level, screen duration can expand (stretch
relationship), contract (summary relationship), or remain
faithful (real time) to story time. By far the most
common of these is the summary relationship whereby a
particular plot event (e.g a train journey lasting several
hours) will be conveyed on screen in just a few minutes.

Screen duration
Screen duration can expand story duration. An event that
takes a few seconds is stretched out to several minutes of
screen time through film editing.

Plot duration
Amount of time that passes during the story.

Story duration
Actual amount of time that passes from the beginning of
the narration to the end.
 Story events are generally presented only once in the plot, however,
sometimes story events will be repeated in the plot treatment.

At times this repetition can provide us with additional/ conflicting

information: for example, in Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950) the same event is
TEMPORAL FREQUENCY shown from multiple perspectives. Repetition can also be employed to
emphasise the significance of a particular event.
Plot can lead us to infer other story spaces than those
presented to us on screen. Screen space bears a
similar relationship to plot space that screen duration
does to plot duration.

We will consider setting and screen space (and

offscreen space) when we look at mise-en-scene and
cinematography in our session on style.

Story space
refers to where the story takes place.

Screen space
refers to the visible space within the frame. Space
selects certain parts of plot space and can ask the
viewer to infer or imagine such a space.
Openings, Closings, and Patterns of Development
• Films don’t just start and stop – they begin and end.

• A narrative’s use of causality, time, and space usually involves a change

from an initial situation to a final situation.

• A film’s beginning provokes expectations and our search for causal

motivations by setting-up a specific range of possible causes and effects.

• The portion of the plot that lays out important story events and character
traits in the opening situation is called the exposition.

• Most patterns of development depend on how causes and effects create a

change in a character’s situation. There is no set pattern of development but
some common ones are the goal orientated and investigation plots. Time
and space can also provide plot patterns. E.g. deadlines, flashbacks,
single locales.
Openings, Closings, and Patterns of Development
• Films can combine various patterns of development – as a film trains the
viewer in its particular form, viewer expectations become more and more precise.

• The middle portion of a film may cause suspense or surprise by delaying or

cheating our expectations: a particularly fine example of the latter is From Dusk
Till Dawn (Rodriguez, 1996).

• The ending of a film will typically seek to resolve causal issues that have run
through the film by way of a climax, creating tension or suspense and formal
resolution, which will result in emotional satisfaction.

• Some films, however, are intentionally anticlimactic. In such films we do not

receive causal closure and are left uncertain about causes and effects.

• This particular form may encourage us to imagine for ourselves what happens
next or to reflect upon other ways in which our expectations have been fulfilled.
narrator’s Narration requires a narrator who tells the story. Often the narrator’s role is in
effect fulfilled by the filmmakers who position themselves outside the story and
decide what to include and exclude as well as the order in which to place
events.

role If a narrator is also a character in the story, it will be clear that the person will
things from a certain perspective. He or she can either be reliable or unreliable.
narrative Linear
Story line that runs from star to end in chronological order
including no flashbacks or flash-forwards and not broken up in

structure anyway.
narrative
Non-linear
Can be made in anyway possible including random orders,
flashbacks or flash-forwards. This type of narrative structure can

structure
be very effective when making a film, as you may want to reveal
the end of the story before you begin to tell the start.
Alternative structures all be
discussing include:

• Non-linear structure
• Episodic structure with an arc
• Wheel structure
• Meandering structure
• Branching structure
• Spiral structure
• Multiple point-of-view
structure
• Parallel structure
• Cumulative structure
 Exposition is at the base of the mountain or the beginning of the story. The film sets up
the characters, setting, and main conflicts. All of the characters in a story have a history,

exposition
details about their pasts that are important to understanding their personality and their
present lives. It is important that viewers know some of these details in order to
understand a story. The EXPOSITION will often have information about events
that happened before the story began.
RISING
Occurs as you begin to move throughout the story. This is where
conflicts start to build. Because of what is established in the
exposition, the characters in the story are led to do something.
This part gets more suspenseful as the story progresses making the

ACTION audience wonder what's going to happen next. The problems

which the character face escalates.
climax
The turning point of the story. This point in the story is when
things finally start to move in a different direction and it may
not always be a positive direction. The “high point”. Usually
the main character comes face to face with a conflict. The
main character will change in some way. It is often the most
exciting part of the story.
falling Occurs after the climax as things start to work themselves out in the
story. You are coming down the mountain just as you are coming down
from the excitement of the climax. Falling action is made up of the

action
events after the climax of a story that wrap up the plot and lead to
resolution. What happens to the characters after the problem is
solved?
resolution
The Resolution is the solution to the problem as you have reached the
bottom of the mountain. The solution might not be what you want, but the
conflict has been resolved. It is the end of the story / final outcome.