Narrative

Very briefly, NARRATIVE is the way the stories are told- how the meaning is constructed to achieve audience understanding. This then makes the film successful. Tzvetan TODOROV discovered that folk tales and fairy stories all followed a similar structural pattern. This is known as the Classic Narrative Pattern. The Classic Narrative Pattern consists of 5 steps in the Narrative and these are:

• EQUILIBRIUM [means that everything in the story is in order, is 'normal' and everyone is happy]
• DISRUPTION [a disruption to the Equilibrium by the means of an event, an action, or a character]
• RESOLUTION [there is also a recognition to the disruption, and this is followed by an attempt to resolve or repair to the disruption]
• RESTORED ORDER [once restored order is achieved everything is back to 'normal' therefore we achieve a New Equilibrium]
• NEW EQUILIBRIUM  [now the problem is solved and the New Equilibrium is achieved until a new, different disrupition takes place]
 

 Classic Narrative Pattern

 

A very good example of this can be viewed in the video below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8VoTI7qtk8

In this video we see the Equilibrium through the man. He is walking as if nothing is wrong with nothing to worry about, but as the audience we see more than the actor in the video because we are introduced to the woman standing at the top of the building before the man is. Through this, as audience, we know that a Disruption is to unfold because A) she is standind at the top os the building (which is not normal)... B) she throws the shoe down to get the man's attention. As soon as the man sees the shoe, he looks up and immedietly reacts and runs to the woman. The Resolution at this point is when he tries to get her not to "jump" off the building and when he takes her to the cafe. There everything seems very 'normal', they look happy and everything is as it should be. But yet again things get out of hand once she starts to get too close to him. This is seen as another disruption as she begins to follow him and won't leave him alone. The Restored Order for the man comes when he finally gets her to leave him alone and for her when she runs back past the cafe, and up the stairs and finds herself at the top of the building. There she tries to "jump" off again, at least that is what we're made to think, until we see her throwing the shoe down again... This is a New Equilibrium for her as she clearly is trying to get closer to a man. This video shows a continuity in the Classic Narrative Patern suggested by TODOROV.


I have chosen a scene which links to the genre of the opening sequence of a movie me and my group are going to be making. This scene comes from a film called 'Ill Manors',

Vladimir Propp however, proposed that there are distinctive character types and actions that happen.. This was developed by Claude Levi-Strauss, he took it a stage further and looked closer at structures of stories. How can meaning derive from narratie structure not by looking at connected series of actions in a story but by looking for connections between story elements. He said that the meaning must be what it's not.. the opposite. Like a parallel, a binary opposite, a situation with two possible outcomes, for example:
a hero   --> usually a villain
rich      --> poor
fear      --> happiness
danger --> safety
love     --> hatred
 In a film this could be:
police  --> outlaws     e.g. 'Ill Manors'
peace  --> fighting     e.g. 'The Pianist'

A film Narrative is here so that we, as audience, approach the film with certain expectations. For example we expect the opening of a film to give us background information so that we are not thrown into the movie without knowing anything. This background information would be to do with the characters and setting, so who it's about or who's in it, what it might be about or what it might lead to and where it is set. We can establish what might happen later on through this information.