The document discusses key concepts in narrative film including:
- Narrative, which is a story or account of events with a beginning, middle, and end.
- Cinematography, which refers to the visual elements that make up a scene like lighting, actors, sets, and camera work.
- Mise-en-scene, which is everything the viewer sees on screen including props, actors, and lighting to set the scene.
- Genre conventions allow viewers to identify if a film is a romance, horror, or other genre. Theories of narrative structure from scholars like Todorov, Kuleshov, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, and Propp are also summarized.
2. What is a Narrative?... Narrative - A story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious. Narrative has also been defined by Bordwell and Thompson (1991) as a chain of events in cause- which effect relationship occurring in time and space. Brannigan E. Narrative Comprehension and film also defined narrative as… “ a way of organising spatial and temporal data into a cause and effect chain of events with a beginning, middle and end that embodies a judgement about the nature of the events as well as demonstrates how it is possible to know, and hence to narrate, the events.”
3. Cinematography: Cinematography is derived from the Greek- “Kinema “movement” and “Graphein” to record.” Cinematography is about what makes a scene- this includes, lighting, actors, set, camera, camera angle and any special effects. Mise en scene: Mise en scene literally refers to everything that that the viewer sees, from props and actors to lighting. The Mise en Scene sets the scene and gives the viewer an idea of what might happen next. Genre associations: Genre associations are the codes and conventions of a genre, this is to allow the viewer to instantaneously know if a film is a romance, horror or action film. An example of this would be the colour red which is often associated with horror movies.
4. Todorov Equalibrium Non-Equalibrium Re-Equalibrium Todorov uses the term book endings to establish a pace to the text… Where the start is calm, the middle is disrupted and the end is once again calm.
