NARRATIVE STRUCTURES

 

Introduction


In order to understand how to structure a short film we looked at conventional narrative structures. The main structure we looked at was Tzveten Todorov's 'linear narrative', which divides the narrative into 5 different stages.
Another popular structure is the three act narrative structure. This follows the theory that every story has a clear beginning, middle and end. Similar to Todorov's theory, it shows that there must be a confrontation during the story, before ending with a resolution.


After looking at these theories, we applied them to both short films and music videos, so we could see how it applied in both scenarios. 

The Lunch Date (1990)
The Lunch Date is an academy award winning short film directed by Adam Davidson. This was one of the short films that we looked at when applying narrative structures.



Arctic Monkeys - 'Leave Before The Lights Come On'
Leave Before The Lights Come On is a song performed by the band Arctic Monkeys. The music video was released in 2006, and was directed by John Hardwick.



 As a class we watched an additional selection of short films, and selected one to do an in-depth analysis of. We had a choice of 4 films:
  • The Ellington Kid (2012)
  • Over (2015)
  • The Arrival (2016)
  • The Fly (2015)
I decided to select Over, a short film based on a true story, directed by Jorn Threlfall. It follows a crime scene, and plays in reverse chronological order by showing the street at night, and working its way backwards hour by hour until it ends by showing the crime.




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