Another lesson - Narrative

In class today we were learning about narrative, what it means and what people have came up with around narrative. We also learnt about some key words like equilibrium and what there meanings are.

Narrative is like a voice over or commentary on a video that has already happened and is not live.

During the lesson we learnt about four people that we need to know for media. These four people are:

1) Barthes
2) Levi-strauss
3) Propp
4) Todorov

Barthes
  • Codes
1) Action
2) Symbolic
3) Enigma

Todorov
  • Structure
1) Obstacles
2) Change over time
3) Different person at end than there was at the start
4) Beginning - A middle - A end

Levi-strauss
  • Binary oppositions
  • Female - male
  • Good - bad
  • Hero - villain
  • Urban - rural
  • Black - white
Propp
  • Characters
  • Need different characters
  • Some have same, this should not always be the case
Propp

He said that there should be eight different character types:
  1. Hero
  2. Villain
  3. Donor
  4. Dispatcher
  5. False hero
  6. Helper
  7. Princess
  8. Farther
The four people felt that in every movie these things should be included in order to make the film exciting. Example - rather than nothing happen and the main character having no obstacles to overcome.


Key words

Equilibrium - State of normality

Disruption of equilibrium - Obstacles to overcome



We had a class task which was to watch mini clips of a video and then describe using what we had learnt today

Jack - jack attack

Obstacles-
Keep disappearing
Keep escaping
Goes on fire
Hard to control





The prestige

Enigma - Where are we? Who is he? What's happening? Who is the girl? What's the electric? What were the hats at graveyard? Is he dead?

Actions - Audience inspects stage. Man stands on his stage. Drops down a trap door. Falls into water and cant escape. Is bird dead. Where did it go.

Symbolic - Top hats. Clothing - Victorian. Suit - rich man. Dark/gloomy. Electric/danger. Bird represents man. Girl represents audience.










Labels: