Reading Fine arts homework
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Narrative_devices26.pptx
Narrative Devices in Film
Analysis of the narrative can be divided into two parts: Story versus narrative
The story itself without any cinematic mediation
Events in the story
Action in the story
Characters in the story
Setting: time and place
How the story is told and the events and people highlighted
Organization of events
Tone of the narrative
Reliability of the characters and their stories and how they connect to what we see on the screen
Anticipated patterns in the story
Narrative devices
Narrative devices are techniques to add meaning to a text with patterns of storytelling and through rearrangements and omissions of significant events.
All films leave out information and rearrange chronology; narrative techniques focus on the important events that add to how the director wants us to read the story.
Narrative is how the story is told, not what the story is.
Questions for Narrative analysis
Where does the story take place?
Who are the main individuals central to the story?
What happens in the story (events)?
Who is telling the story (the narrator)?
How many stories are told?
To whom are they telling it (other characters, including the audience, or just to the audience)?
What is the occasion of the telling?
What do they hope to achieve by sharing the story (purpose)?
Narrative Devices
Literary texts and cinematic texts approach storytelling somewhat differently, but use the same techniques
Time-shift (the rearrangement of events into non-chronological order)
Narrative Ellipsis (leaving significant events out)
Embedded narrative (stories within stories) organized within a frame narrative
Point of view– who sees and who hears – when the camera becomes a character
Unreliable narrators (how the events are interpreted)
Folktale motifs: Fairy tales, myths and legends (patterns in storytelling)
Beginnings and endings (how exactly the story begins and ends)
Interiority (how the audience has access to interior thoughts of the characters)
Time-shift
One of the most important aspects of telling a story is the subtle use of the arrangements of events in time
A time-shift occurs when the narrative jumps from one event to an earlier event and then jumps back into the later event, or begins in the middle of the story, or begins at the end of the story. There is some displacement of events.
The structure of time in a story: Ann Patchett has argued in “These Precious Days” that
When does the story start and when does it end? Will time be linear or can it stutter and skip? At what point does our understanding of the action shift?
Time-shift is not a flashback
Time-shift is not a flashback or flash-forward (Do not use this vocabulary in this course)
This concept is much more inclusive and allows for many ways to disrupt the chronology of the events, including using some editing devices to disrupt time
For film, time-shift can be achieved through different ways
The events of the story can be arranged in non-chronological order. Pulp Fiction, for instance, begins at the middle of the events of the story. This is called in media res.
The events of the story could be in chronological order with the character telling a story of a previous time (embedded narrative) thus telling, the story, not showing the story. Embedded narrative also allows for an unreliable narrator.
The events of the story could be primarily in chronological order, but the film jumps back in time to show the previous events (Showing, not telling). This can be as an embedded narrative. In Sixth Sense, for instance, the video of the mother poisoning her daughter captures an earlier event.
The events could “skip and stutter,” moving back and forth.
How does the director show time-shift?
Directors can indicate changes in time through the visual clues
1. Through costumes or props that indicate time
2. Through dates on the screen
3. Through other visual clues such as changes in the setting and design
Embedded and Frame narratives
Even stories told in chronological order include mini-narratives that deepen our understanding of the story
Frame narratives are the story that frames or encloses, like a painting frame, a shorter narrative
In film, embedded narrative often refer to an earlier time either through a memory (either a character telling another character about the earlier event or the film showing the earlier event), or through an introduced scene that is not a memory but relates the actual events, or a separate story somehow connected to the frame or outside story
Time-Shift that includes Embedded narrative
Frame story, which is the outside story of the narrative
Embedded narrative is the interior story within the larger frame story
Examples of embedded narrative in film
Using a videotape to expose the mother
The Princess Bride (1987)
The grandfather reads a story about the princess bride to his grandson who is sick at home.
Folktale story – Once upon a time
Note: the contrast between video game and ‘old fashioned” storytelling
Compare the story being read and the film – How do the two ways of telling stories compare?
The Princess Bride
In this narrative, most of the film is a story that the grandfather is reading to his sick grandson (the frame story)
The only connection between the grandfather’s reading (the frame story) and the narrative about the princess bride itself (the embedded narrative) is the process of reading the book, which the grandfather thinks is a good book
There are a variety of ways to show time-shift
But not all directors want to make it obvious.
Consider, for instance, Aftersun, which introduces the frame story, the older filmmaker revisiting her videotapes. The audience doesn’t learn this important information until we have already been introduced to the main characters.
The embedded narrative, which includes her memories and selections of the film that the main character and her father shot on the vacation, is immediately introduced as a contemporary events, happening right now.
Narrative Omission
Narrative omission is the intentional withholding of significant information either from the characters in the film world or from the audience or both until later in the film.
Narrative omission may also leave out information that the characters or some of the characters don’t know, which often happens in mysteries or thrillers, where the characters don’t know the murderer. Consider Scream (1996) and all its versions. For this genre, we anticipate narrative omissions.
Narrative omissions can also divide the audience and the characters. In North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock, 1959, one character is speaking to another character, but we can’t hear what they are saying. They are designing a trick event that we later see (though it also turns out – since this is the brilliant Alfred Hitchcock –that part of the trick event is also withheld from one of the characters – so a double narrative omission).
Note that all stories leave out events; narrative ellipsis is about significant events that are left out until later in the film.
For narrative omission, there needs to be a scene that reveals the significant information.
An example of Narrative Omission of information that also contributes to meaning
In this scene, which begins with Mason getting his hair cut off, he reveals at the end of the scene that he did not want his hair cut and that his stepfather did not ask him. It is the revelation at the end that makes this a scene of narrative omission.
The stepfather in the scene also says derogatory things about long hair.
This is typical of the narrative omissions in Boyhood in which a minor event in the boy’s life has ramifications for the future . The bullying of the stepfather in the scene is then made clear in a later scene between Mason’s mother and her current husband when he is physically violent and abusive at the dinner table.
There are other events that are omitted (the marriages of his mother, the divorces of his parents and subsequent divorces of his mother, for instance) that impact Mason.
Subjective Point of View (POV)
In literary texts, the point of view is important for making it clear to the reader that the ideas may or may not be accurate and may be subjective and unreliable, just the viewpoint of the narrator.
In literary texts, this is shown through first person, ”I” narration or unmediated thoughts revealed in the text.
In film, the subjective point of view is shown in two ways: through the camera as the subject so that the camera sees the object as though the camera were one of the characters and / or through sound so that the audience hears the sound as though one of the characters.
Unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator is a split between what the character says and what the screen reveals OR the information presented in the film is later changed or amended by the events.
The unreliable narrator can be intentional, where the character knows that they are lying or misdirecting the other characters and the audience.
An unreliable narrator can also be unaware of the objective events.
In Gone, Baby, Gone, we know that some characters are lying, but we don’t find out about this until later in the film. It is what builds suspense in the film.
In Memento and An Anatomy of a Fall, the reliability of the main characters becomes questionable as the narrative unfolds. So, unreliable narrators are often associated with narrative omissions.
Sixth Sense
This is a film about a young boy who sees dead people, which frightens his mother and leads her to take him to a therapist; most of the film is his interaction with the therapist and the question about whether he sees dead people.
The twist at the end of the film also relies on the audience’s reading of the reliability of the young boy.
There are several embedded narratives that perform different functions in the film but often undermine the reliability of the individual.
The funeral scene of the young girl mentioned in the previous slide. In this scene, the young boy at the urging of the dead girl, puts the videotape of the mother poisoning the girl into the television during the wake
This videotape contradicts the mother’s story of the daughter’s death
This is an example of time-shift (before the daughter’s funeral, which is the current event), frame story (during the funeral wake), unreliable narrator (the mother who told the authorities and her husband that she didn’t know how the daughter died), narrative omission (we and the characters except for the mother don’t learn about the real cause of the death until the videotape reveals this).
Folktale or fairytale motifs
Patterns of story components that appear in stories across different cultures
To apply these to a film, we consider some combination of the folktale motifs, not just one
Fairy tale motifs include:
Hero (or more recently) heroine on a journey or quest
Overcoming an obstacle
Killing a monster / dragon
Using special implements or tools
Protagonist is marked with special clothes or special powers
Villain is marked with special clothes or special powers
Princess Bride (1987) and the use of Folktale motifs
Folktale motifs in The Princess Bride include:
A hero saving a woman
A heroine in need of help
A actual journey
A villain (monster/dragon)
A monster / villain is defeated
Used frequently in Marvel films as a short cut to how we read the characters and actions
Beginnings and endings
How a literary text and a cinematic text begins and ends also indicates to the reader or audience how to read the film
Beginnings
Beginnings in literary texts
Tell the reader how to read the rest of the novel
What does the reader expect from the rest of the novel?
Does the story start at the beginning of the events or jump into the middle (in media res) or end of the events?
Beginnings in cinematic texts
In cinematic texts, the first establishing shot and even the credits can tell the audience how to read the rest of the film
The beginning may signal the genre conventions of the film or how much the audience needs to attend to the story or stylistic ideas
How does the first shot and the first scene tell the audience what to expect in the film?
Open (still some questions)
Does the audience know what will happen next?
Are some of the events in the narrative still without any resolution?
The audience knows who the killer is, or how all the events ended, or that the couple will live happily ever after.
There are no major questions left unanswered in the story.
Closed (resolutions to all the questions)– Often happily ever after…
Endings – How do we end a film?
Brooklyn is a story about an irish immigrant in 1950s Brooklyn
Brooklyn, 2009, colm Toibin
Beginning in the literary text
“Eilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work. She watched Rose crossing the street from sunlight into shade, carrying the new leather handbag that she had bought in Clerys in Dublin in the sale.”
Brooklyn, 2015, John Crowley
Beginning in the cinematic text
Establishing shot with credits of an Irish street (Friary) in the gloom and then a shot of Eilis getting ready to go out, then at church, and finally at Kelly’s store. The first scene ends with Eilis telling Mrs. Kelly that she is going to America.
The ending also contributes to the meaning of the text
Open ending to the novel, Brooklyn
Final paragraph: “’She has gone back to Brooklyn,’ her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmine Bridge on its way toward Wexford, Eilis imagined the years ahead, when these words would come to mean less and less to the man (Jim) who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.”
Closed ending to the film, Brooklyn
The last scene of the film has Eilis back in Brooklyn standing next to a wall and watching Tony, her husband in America. He realizes that she is standing there, and he rushes across the street and embraces her.
Citizen Kane, orson Welles, 1941
Establishing shots of Kane’s estate and its ruin
Begins with scene with Rosebud and death of Kane
Moves back to try to understand what “Rosebud” means
Contradictory unreliable narrators
Ending ambiguous
Interiority in Literature
In literary texts, we learn about interiority through the thoughts of the character, which makes literature different from real life, since we don’t have access to other people’s thoughts.
In the earlier examples from the beginning of the novel, Brooklyn, we know what Elis is thinking:
“Elis … noticed her sister walking briskly from work. She watched Rose crossing the street from sunlight into shade, carrying the new leather handbag that she had bought in Clerys in Dublin in the sale. “
The “noticed” signals to the reader that the rest of the sentence is from Elis’s interior thoughts.
Interiority in literature
At the end of the novel, we also are given Elis’s interior thoughts.
In this section, rather than showing what Elis’s sees, as we do in the beginning of the novel, here we are given access to an imaginary conversation and her own thoughts about what Jim might think about her disappearance (my italics):
“’She has gone back to Brooklyn,’ her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmine Bridge on its way toward Wexford, Eilis imagined the years ahead, when these words would come to mean less and less to the man (Jim) who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.”
Interiority in film
In film, this access to the interior thoughts is much more difficult to achieve.
One way to do this is through voice-over narrative by a character who is explaining the situation or revealing what they are thinking.
Another approach is through diary examples, where the character is writing in the diary about what they think of events.
The most common way for the interior thoughts to be revealed in film is through the facial expressions of the actors and is often was is awarded through prizes.
This requires the audience to ”read” facial expressions and gestures and for actors to convey those interior thoughts through gestures, movements, facial expressions.
Both have narrative structure but the tools for that structure are a bit different in the two types of texts.
Literary and cinematic texts
Concepts for narrative Techniques
Time-shift
Narrative ellipsis
Embedded narrative and frame narrative
Unreliable narrator
Folktale motifs
Beginnings and endings
Interiority
