Group Narrative & Narrative Theory - Miss Georgiou

The purpose of a narrative is to send a message to the audience. It is also important because its what the whole film is going to be about and able to use starting point of what different techniques to use.

We had a group discussion and told everyone our own narratives. We took turns to discuss our own narratives one by one and spoke about the advantages and disadvantages of each narrative.

INDIVIDUAL NARRATIVES

Wai-lum Pang 
A couple get married, the man named tom and a single mother called Elizabeth. The mother has a daughter called Katie, who they move in with Tom.  Katie comes home upset and talks to her step-dad and explains her best friend is going out with the guy whom she has feelings for, so she feels betrayed as her friend knew about this.  Tom treats Katie like his own daughter, this the first time, he has seen Katie in the state.  He starts thinking of a way to make things better and thinks of plan as he invites her friend over to talk to her friend.  However, it didn't go as planned, as he gets aggressive towards her as he seems to get flashbacks of his step-daughter sad.  Tom could not control his anger and grabs the first thing which could cause any kind of harm, that being a vase and smashes it on the back of her friends head while she was turned.  This doesn't kill her, but leaves her unconscious, he decides to take her body to the basement.  He stabs her body continuously, as he thinks she will tell everyone  At this point, Tom realises what he has done and becomes mentally unstable.  The police finds out that her friend is missing and goes on a search around every house with a dog at hand.  This is the part where he gets arrested.

The advantages of this idea would be that it has quite a good story line to it, it has a twist as they will not know what is wrong with the husband.  A disadvantage would be that it would be quite hard to get characters as there are allot of character involved including the police, dog, couple, daughter and the best friend.   The disadvantage of this idea would be that it may be quite hard to film. 

Beau Abery 
An patient is on life support in a hospital, after being in a car accident as she was ran over.  There is a doctor, who always wears a mask.  In the first instance of seeing this doctor, the patient is terrified and her first instinct is to take off the all the medical equipment which she is hooked to and runs away out of the hospital.  The masked doctor, looks for her and chases her into the forest where she dies from not being on the life support machine, which she needed.  The masked doctor takes her back a room which nobody knows about and experiments on her.

An advantage of this idea is that it isn't really a typical narrative for a thriller, it's an original idea.  I believe it make the audience build a relationship with the character as she is ill and they would want her to survive.  The disadvantage with this idea is that it would be difficult to film as you would need equipment which looked like it should and it may confuse the audience.  It may also be difficult to get a setting which looks like a hospital.

Benjamin Yarwood 
A group of friends go to the cinema to see Madagascar 2, one to friends (the victim) falls asleep.  Once the film has ended, her friends decide to leave her there and everyone else leaves the cinema, meaning she is on her own.  The victim wakes up, wondering where everyone has gone, so she goes into the lobby but finds out the cinema is shut down and abandoned, nobody is there. She suddenly hears a cinema reel rolling, she goes up the stairs to see what it is showing and she finds a masked man and then runs away shutting the door.

The advantage of this narrative is that some of the audience will be able to relate as it may be regular thing for a group of friends to gout to the cinema to see a film.  A disadvantage to this would be that it wouldn't be close reality as surely friends would wake somebody up if they fell asleep somewhere, unless they thought it was a joke, therefore meaning its not realistic.

THE GROUP NARRATIVE

Our group decided to make a whole new idea, as we felt they weren't really good enough.  So, we thought of a range of ideas and came up with this idea, combining some of our new ideas together to make this thriller narrative.   Some of the inspirations came from Scream 3, considering the car park idea.

A women comes back from work, she drives into a car park, whilst she locks her car and attempts to leave, a car alarm sets off, she turns around.  There is a killer, who then gets chased into a forest and gets lost.  The audience do not know if she gets killed or not.

 The narrative consists of two characters the female victim and the killer. We have decided to do use the female victim because they are conventional to the thriller genre and also because they are seen as vulnerable where the audience are able to build a relationship with them.

NARRATIVE THEORIES

Narrative theories were made by three people, including how the narrative is made up. Three people including Vladimir Propps theory, Todorov's theory and Aristotle's theory.

VLADIMIR PROPPS THEORY 

A Russian Critic, said that the narrative is based on the characters which perform a function.  
Including characters of:

• The hero - A character that seeks something
• The Villan - who opposes/actively blocks the hero's quest 
• The donor - A character who prepares the hero or gives an object
• The dispatcher - character to makes the lack known and send the hero off
• The false hero - Takes credit for the hero's actions or tries to marry the princess
• The helper - character who helps the hero complete task

This theory is allot like Shrek, therefore meaning its based more towards fairytales and not thrillers.

TODOROV'S THEORY

Tzvetan Todorov was against Vladimir Propps theory idea of narrative theories whilst allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts with his theory of equilibrium:

• State of equilibrium
• Disruption of equilibrium
• A recognition that the disorder has occurred
• An attempt to repair the damage of disruption
• Resume or a restoration of equilibrium

The narrative is driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium.  However, the equilibrium attained at the end of the story is  is not the same to the initial equilibrium.  He argues that the narrative needs transformation.  The characters or the situations are made through the process of disruption.  The disruption itself usually takes place  outside the normal framework, outside the normal social events.

ARISTOTLE'S THEORY

Aristotle's theory was around the idea of certain theories.  The theory may include headings that are used by some producers. 

Including the themes of:

• Inciting incident
• Dramatic incident
• Character Goal
• Resolution
• Sympathy
• Empathy

Our narrative will follow Todorov's theory as it will follow a story which is realistic and will have a equilibrium included, therefore leaving the audience in suspense and wondering what will happen.  In our narrative, the equilibrium will be when she see's a shadow or a man standing with a knife, once she has stepped out the car.  This is the point where it would be not normal for the character it disrupts her daily routine. Our narrative will be realistic because we want our target audience to relate to the situation.  We will be including an equilibrium because it will leave the audience in suspense and make them keep watching, to see what will happen next.

The narrative includes the victim driving home from work and pulling into the car park, to go into her apartment.  While she steps out the car, the villain is watching her and as she walks, she realised the killer holding a knife.  This is the point where her everyday event has been disrupted, making what she was about to do completely different as she starts running out of the car park and into a forest.