FOURTH POST!: Narrative!

two weeks ago we learned about narrative within a story.a narrative is a combination of 2 things, story and plot, plotis the things that happen within a novel, movie or any other sort of media, while story is the way the story is told in the piece of media. the main formula for a narrative is Beggining, Middle, End, this is what makes up a narrative, usually this is set up like this:

Beggining    - Middle       - End
Equalibrium - Disturbance - Equilibrium

the idea of equalibrium and distrubance came from Tordorov.

the first idea of narrative came from Aristotle, a greek philiosopher who wrote "the poetics" a book all about plot and story telling, who basically wrote down these 3 elements that make a story, because every good story needs a beggining, some sort of disturbence, and then a end, although this concept can somtimes change depending on the story, either it can have several forms of disturbance, a false equilbrium, or even start of with the disturbance.

there are key examples of these diffrent types of story telling in movies, used very effectivly.

the usual type of story telling is very widly used. a example is Monsters Inc, and really any pixar or disney story.

it starts with mainly establishing shots so you get the basis of chracters and the world they live in, which is a form of equalibrium, everything is fine and they are happy going about there normal lives. then somthing changes that has nothing happened before, Boo the human child appears in there world, which causes havok for the 2 main characters, which is the disturbance. after this they seek a soulution to send Boo back to her home, along the way possibly learning somthing that can later add to the ending. then finally the ending arrives and there is a form of diffrent Equalibrium, normally creating a better atmosphere, in monsters inc case the final equalibrium is them finding out that laughter is a better source of power than scares, but at the very end they leave on a cliff hanger, where sully remakes Boos door, only hearing her voice the movie then ends. possible leaving it open to a 2nd movie.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuzNohk5cYw
This is the ending of the movie "requim for a dream"  which ends with disturbance (or possibly a dark equilibrium) but still very un traditional, as the main character loses his arm from drug abuse, the friend ends up in jail, the girlfriend turns to prostitution, and the mother turns insane, very diffrent from usual story telling methods where the protangonist and close friends find a deeper equalibrium to there lifes.

and finally there is the type of story that plays in a diffrent order, somtimes showing the disturbance first then filling in all the gaps are the story goes along, this is usually done with flashbacks/forwards and audio triggers (somthing like a swwoosshh sound) so signify the change in type, or this is done using frequency events, these are events in a plot that are used more than once, so they can always jump back to the same scene and youll think its placed in the same time, for example a setting or very significant clothes a character is wearing. afew good examples of these are:

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

first an awesome movie!. the story is about Joel the Protangonist, wanting to erase the memory of Clementine (the images are Clementine) firstly the beggining of the movie is actually the end, and thoughout the mind erasing process, we see his memories as they crumble apart, a good way to connect these pieces in a story is following Clementines changing hair color.

Mullholland Drive
any movie by david lynch is extremly confusing so i will not bother trying to desribe this movie, but the concept is sort of a within a dream and then played in a backwards order, this is the first scene which is very scary and disturbing, being the disturbance in this movie, it has afew more disturbances later on but it starts with one which is the main idea. this then goes into equalibrium in the drema world, then into more disturbance. the ending is quite a mysetery to me, as its very trippy and could be seen as some form of equalibrium. Also because this Café is shown many times in the movie it can be seen as a point to refrence all other events.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4945022/mulholland_drive_ending/
 

Examples of media breaking this rule is used alot in series, for example in any episode of Lost, in this one if you skip to about 5 minutes in, it skips alot of story straight to the cliff hanger that happens in the middle of the next series. it mainly shows Jack talking in riddles saying " we have to go back" to other characters that were also on the island. this is a large cliff hanging is lost as they spent the last 3 series trying to get off the island and too hear they have to go back, leaves the viewer on a big high wanting to see more. this is a very clever ploy used by television to keep the audience very interested, i cannot think of a single series that does not use this technique to pull the audience in for more. apart from comedies like "the simpsons" who pull the audience in again and again with its humour and how it uses alot of intertextuality making it very maliable.

a good way to show how movies and series work with this is in a chart, this has already been created on Freytags triangle:

this shows how from the beggining to the middle and end, how the action raises and falls, of course this can be changed slightly but the general rule for most media will be the same, that it gets more intense as it enters the middle of the media, and it slowly falls as it reaches equalibrium again.

for a slightly more intense movie, piece of media or series it would be cut up even more to show how it leaves on cliff hangers to keep the audience interested:

as you can see as the action raises geenerally there is a second triangle, this traingle sharply rises and then peaks smoothing out at the top, this is the general structure of a series building in tension towards the end of every episode.


moving away from how narritive is shown, there is also the side of characters to show narrative, in storys there are generally very loose archtypes that can apply to most shows, this is defined in the book "mophology of the folktale" the main types of characters are:

Villian - The main antagonist, who is causing the disturbance.
Donor - The character who offers some sort of item/wisdom to help the hero.
The (magical?) Helper - The Heros friend, or right hand man, who helps with smaller tasks.
Princess/Farther - the person needing saved/ or needing some sort of help.
Dispatcher - The person who sends the hero on his quest
Hero or Victim/Seeker Hero - the main character, who eventually defeats the villian to save the world.
False Hero - the underdog character, who lives in the heros shadow, helpful in some ways.

this can apply to most games, or shows but cant apply to them
all. a extremly good example is Mario, the characters are:





Villian - Browser.

Donor - mushroom headed dude
The (magical?) Helper - Yoshi.

Princess/Farther - Princess Peach.

Dispatcher - again mushroom headed dude

Hero or Victim/Seeker Hero - Mario

False Hero -Wario, or Lugio depending on the game.





but this concept dosnt always apply. like in games like tekken, or portal. tekken there are alot of characters all can be considered heros, and portal there is only about 3 characters, so these concepts dont always apply but at least afew are usually shown in media.



linking back to games, a game is a very diffrent sort of narrative compared to any sort of visual material because it is all interactive, where as in a book you can turn a page and always see what ever information on any page, in a game you are not open to any of this information so have to wait to reveal it. there are afew words that describe these ideas:

Agency: the satisfying feeling to take action to win a challenge and see the results of the choice, using a controller as apart of interactive media.

Aporia: this links to both books and games as apart of interactive media, this is a gap in a game of logic, it is basically somthing that is unexplained or is never solved, like a hole in a story or not being able to go through a certain door in a game, this can even go down to not knowing a word in a book.

Epiphany: the intense feeling of over coming Aporia, a large feeling of acomplishment over your victory.

Tmesis: the reader skipping pages in a book, or choosing one path over another in a game, so the content is lost, either from skimming words to loss track of story, or just by not following certain paths. this is shown quite alot in games like infamous or elder scrolls, where you have many options. but in both you can always go back to the last bit of content.

a final thought id like to mention, is a very interesting idea of thinking of narrative as a maze. it starts at one point when you enter the story, and from that point the story can take many twist and turns along the way and possible have many alternative storys involved, but at the end there is always one ending to come out the other side.