Thursday, 2 October 2014

Narrative Exam - Sophie Bishop

Planning:

Pros and cons of the theories:


30 minute exam:

My thriller The Red Caller, uses a few theories, but equally explores modernism and post modernism, so following traditional structure and theories as well as breaking that mould. I will write about Todorov's theory, exploring equilibrium, Levi-Strausse's theory of binary opposite, Propp's character type theory, Barthe's enigma code theory and Cook's cause and effect theory. Most of these theorists looked at these theories within narrative texts such as literature  rather than film, because it was before film was created. So some are not included in my thriller from last year.

Our thriller included Todoro's theory of an equilibrium, disequilibrium and re-equilibrium included in a narrative. Our thriller did so, in the beginning of our thriller, it was calm, to build suspense. The shots showing our location and our businessman.  The disequilibrium was shown in the middle at near the ending, as the audience were finding our 'The Red Caller' was blacking the business man (the conflict). Then again towards the end the equilibrium was shown, as the soundtrack softens slightly (re-equilibrium).

Levi-Strauss theory was also presented in our thriller, his concept was surrounded by contrasting oppositions, he called binary opposites. This was shown by our colour, lighting and characters. The colour was our black and white vs the red selective colouring effect. This binary opposite allowed the audience to boldly see 'The Red Caller'. The lighting was very shaded in areas and bright in others, another binary opposite, as well as the characters. 'The Red Caller' was our evil and villain character, while the business man was our good and heroin character, which is a traditional structure in narratives, modernism.

Propp's theory has a similar concept, keeping in with contrasting characters. Propp stated that in every narrative there are seven archetypes. Our thriller did not follow this strictly, but had two of these characters in Propp's theory. Our business man character was the princess (heroin), and 'The Red Caller' was our villain, as stated before. A male being the princess is not stereotypical in narratives so we have broken this boundary, exploring. For our thriller it is a positive aspect, that we did not include all seven character types, because this would ruin the suspense, by revealing everything in the opening before the film.

Barthe's theory was one that we included in our thriller, his theory was the enigma code (plus other codes too). We made a conscious effort to include this in order to help build mystery and suspense. We created many questions about 'The Red Caller', including Who is she?, Is she calling him? and Is she blackmailing him? These all helped tremendously with building mystery and suspense.

Pam Cook believed that all Hollywood/narratives had a cause and an effect. We had a cause and effect, but not as clear as Cook's theory suggests. Our cause was 'The Red Callers' blackmail, but this was not clear until the middle of the sequence. The effect was shown at the begging and the end, so this was not in the order that is traditionally.

In conclusion our thriller was equally keeping up with the traditional/modernism structure as well as breaking away from that mold/post-modernism. So our thriller used the familiar structure, but has broken away slightly in order to become a successful thriller, by building suspense and mystery. 

1 comment:

  1. There is convincing understanding of the theories and you are able to use them to read into your work. You have also made a judgment about the relationship to traditional ideas about Narrative.

    WT B

    To improve:
    "Barthe's" - Barthes'

    "Our business man character was the princess (heroin) HEROINE, and 'The Red Caller' was our villain, as stated before. A male being the princess is not stereotypical in narratives so we have broken this boundary, exploring. For our thriller it is a positive aspect, that we did not include all seven character types, because this would ruin the suspense, by revealing everything in the opening before the film..." - to what extent does your work really conform to these archetypes, arent they usually gender based?

    ReplyDelete