Genre - 30 minutes

Essay

To what extent does your thriller conform to traditional structures of genre?

My thriller follows some but not all genre structures.  We didn’t include everything that each theory included as we didn’t need to. Many things are expected in thrillers and to carry this out we needed to include that so it would conform to that theory.

Neale’s theory was that over time the thriller is dynamic and evolves over time. My thriller does not conform to this as the thriller does not evolve over time due to showing the reason as to why the men are meeting and exchanging package is shown at the end of the thriller. If it was to evolve over time the kidnapped girl would be shown at the beginning.

Chandler’s theory is that the setting, prop, costume, camera angles and lighting. The settings of the place is in a busy town using a male in suite as this

5 Theories - Pre Reading

5 Theories

- Tzetvan Todorov
- Vladimir Propp

- Claude Levi-Strauss
- Tim O'Sullivan
- Pam Cook

Narrative: The structure of the story - Beginning, middle & end

Diegesis: The fictional time and space created by the narrative and the world in which the story takes place

Verisimilitude: Dependant on if it is true or real. To allow audience to engage it must appear to be real as we watch it (diegetic effect), the story therefore has verisimilitude and follow the rulse of continuity, temporal and spacial coherence.

Tzvetan Todorov suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure. They begin with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progress as something comes along to disrupt that equilibrium, and finally reach a resolution, when equilibrium is restored.

Vladimir Propp came up with the theory that their are only a certain number of characters, who appear up in most narratives.

Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that all narratives had to be driven forward by conflict that was cause by a series of opposing forces. he called this the theory of Binary Opposition, and it is used to describe how each main force in a narrative has its equal and opposite.Analysing a narrative means identifying these opposing forces and understanding how the conflict between them will drive the narrative on until, finally, some sort of balance or resolution is achieved.

- light/dark

- good/evil

- noise/silence

- youth/age

- right/wrong

- poverty/wealth

- strength/weakness

- inside/outside

Tim O'Sullivan argues that all media texts tell us some kind of story. Media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves. Not all personal stories but the story of us as a culture or set of values.

Pam Cook argues that the Hollywood narrative structure should have:

- Linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution

- A high degree of narrative closure

- A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

Narrative Theorist - Essay Plan (notes)

Narrative is commonly known as a structure of a story  which has a beginning, middle and end.

Tim O'Sullivan stresses that all media text must have some kind of story to it. Media texts are ways of telling different stories of people as a group of people or and individual person.

Narrative theory shows that what we experience when reading a text to understand a particular set of constructions and conventions and it's important to be aware of how these constructions are put together.

Important words and meaning;

Narrative - structure to a story 

Diegesis - the fictional space and time implied by the narrative - what's being created e.g the world in which the story takes place.

Verisimilitude - the quality of appearing to be real of true. - Verisimilitude - following the rules of continuity, temporal and space coherence 

 Classical Narritive - Pam Cook

Linerity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of ENIGMA RESOLUTION.

A high degree of narrative closure

A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence

Kate Domaille 

Every story ever told can be fitted into one of eight narrative types. Each of these narrative types has a source, an original story upon which the others are based, These stories are as followed:
Achilles - The fatal flaw
Candide - The indomitable hero
Cinderalla - dream comes true
Circe - The Chase
Faust - Selling your soul
Orpheus - the gift that is taken away
Romeo and Juliet - The love story
Tristan and Iseult - The love triangle

Vladimir Propp concluded that regardless of the individual differences in terms of plot characters and setting, such narratives would share common structural features.

Narrative Theory

There are many different narrative theories that can all be adapted and linked to things, Pam Cooks  theory was that things should follow the plot of having a beginning, middle and end to it, where as my Thriller does not as it shows what's caused the worry/problem at the end rather then the end because it causes the audience to carry on watching.

Kate Domaille's theory was that every story can fit into one of eight narrative. Orpheus the loss of something is the one that fits into my Thriller as the male receiving the package is the one who has lost his wife and the male who has given the package is the one who has been jealous of the male having the girl and himself not.

Claude Levi's theory is that there's opposites so the audience can see who is the good guy and the bad guy. This also allows the audience to compare them with each other. My Thriller has opposites as the husband wanted to get his wife back when the other male had kidnapped her.

Vladimir Propp's theory is regardless of the differences they share things in common such as, suites, props, location and theme. My Thriller the actors are dressed in suites. The location is in a town/city. The props are similar to the props in other Thrillers.


Tzvetan Todorov's theory is that there are stages which contain, equilibrium, disequilibrium, recognition, action, restoration. This mean that there are these different stages through the Thriller. There are different stages through mine as it starts calm and then goes in to worried and builds tension.

Theory Genre - Pre Reading

Daniel Chandler - Conventional definitions of genre based on the notion that they constitute conventions of content (themes or settings) and from (structure and style) which are shared by texts which are regarded as belonging to them.

Steve Neale - Stresses that genres are not systems they are processes. They are dynamic and elvolve over time.

Jason Mittell - Argues that genres are cultural categories that leap boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience and cultural practices as well. Industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Allowing audiences to make choices.

Rick Altman - Argues that genres offers audiences a set of pleasures
- Emotional (audiences emotional response)
- Visceral (gut responses, feeling)
- Intellectual (Unravel a mistery, "whodunit")

Metz - Argued that the genres go through a cycle of changes during their lifetime
- Experimental stage
- Classic stage
- Parody stage
- Deconstruction stage

Nicholas Abercrombie - Suggests that the boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable. He is concerned with modern television, which he suggests seems to be engaged in a steady dismantling genre.

David Buckingham - Argues that genre is not simply given by culture but is a constant process of negotiation and change.

Typical mise-en-scene/visual style
- props
- set
- lighting
- location
- camera angles
- special effects

Typical types of narrative
- Plots
- Historical
- Setting
- Set pieces

Generic Types
- Characters
- Roles

Typical Personnel
- Directors
- Producers
- Actors
- Stars

Typical Sound Design
- Dialogue
- Music
- Sound effects

How To Write The Exam

Representation Exam

To what extent does your thriller conform to traditional structures of representation?

Introduction

Our thriller mainly conforms to the traditional structures of representation, this is provided through the analysis of my thriller and looking at different theories which the thriller is based upon. Our thriller opening sequence is a has a traditional typical thriller theme style which is apparent through the use of dark lighting, intense soundtrack, suits, a vulnerable woman and a sense of unknown.

Marxism

Our thriller strongly conforms to this theory, our thriller shows how the adult male social group is dominant over women. Identity is also constructed through the use of men in suits holding briefcases to enhance and show their power and authority. In contrast the vulnerable woman is shown to be in a typical dress that a woman would wear which builds and constructs her identity throughout. The male identity of the main character is constructed throughout showing him to be the most in control and powerful over all the other characters. This is also enhanced by the use of him being in the centre of the camera. The men also all behave/dress in a typical and similar way, the same for the only woman in the video. This conforms to Micheal Maffesoli’s theory.

Feminism

Our thriller also conforms to O’Sullivan et al’s theory, the main women is feminised and seen to be the typical vulnerable woman in the video. This is reflected in the language of the video, the woman does not speak showing her inability and weakness to talk in a are where there are predominantly males. Also the woman is assumed to be weak by the use of her being kidnapped to show her weakness and incapability to fight back. This is shown by the woman being objectified by the camera and voyerism is clear throughout through the use of chains and kidnapping. The video also shows that the predominant point of view is masculine - Laura Maulvey

Post Modernism

Our thriller does not conform to the idea of representations being blurred (Julian Mcdoughall). Our thriller clearly shows the clear definition between the two sexes. This video does relate to real life situations but this is more exercised and overdramatic, our thriller also follows traditional ideas of a typical thriller. This includes the villian, victim and a basic storyline. Also our video doesn't show hyperreality as it is very relatable and happens on a daily basis all over the world (Baudrillard).

Our thinner does not challenge the typical thriller idea, it uses men and women, where men are more dominant, low lighting, intense soundtrack and the typical men in suits and women in clothing that would create male gaze.

Stereotypes

Our thriller does show how the stereotypes are portrayed and defined throughout the video. Our video uses the process from O’Sullivan et al’s theory. As the thriller opening progresses the characters become more known and provides us with the woman being a typical sexual object who has been kidnapped by the assertive, powerful male. Our thriller also links to Martin Barker’s theory as the woman in our video is interpreted as vulnerable and weak. His theory provides the idea that women are stereotyped and misinterpreted in the real world as their are many women who are more dominant and powerful over men. She is also shown to be a sexual object by the way she is typically dressed in a tight fitted dress.

Conclusion

To conclude overall my thriller does strongly conform to the theories of representation throughout my video. This is created by basing our thriller upon other thrillers we have researched which all follow the “traditional” ways of making a thriller. This therefore was what we based our ideas upon which has made our thriller traditional and doesn't challenge the idea of what a thriller is. My thriller also strongly links to nearly all of the theories which shows that many of these theories apply to most if not all thrillers in some way.

Representation Essay

To what extent does your thriller conform to traditional structures of representation?

Our thriller does conform to traditional structures of representation, however there are ways in which it doesn't too. Our thriller does conform to tradition through marxism and through stereotypes, however it does not conform through feminism and representations of reality. 

Our thriller conforms to traditional structures of representation through marxism. Our thriller conforms to the theory of Michel Maffesoli that members of small groups have similar views, dress codes and behaviours. You can see this as all of our characters have similar identities and therefore all have a smart dress code. However, their behaviours and actions are different and this is what separates the good and the bad from each other. This also links to David Gauntlett's theory that characters are not given identities but it is their actions and appearance which gives them an identity. Our thriller also conforms to this as we do not clearly give our characters identities but throughout the thriller you can see their characters develop and therefore the audience can construct their own view on the characters. As our thriller conforms to these theories it is clear that, through marxism, our thriller conforms to traditional structure of representation. This is because the theories are explanations of tradition representation therefore if our thriller conforms to these, it conforms to traditional structures.

Our thriller also conforms to the traditional structures of representation through stereotypes. This is because there are the clear stereotypes of good and evil in our thriller. O'Sullivan et al has the theory that stereotypes can be clearly identified and are labels of people within different groups. Our thriller conforms to this because of the clear representation of good and evil stereotypes. You can see these stereotypes in the men of the thriller because of their actions and also the way in which they oppose each other. For example, our protagonist is faced against 4 other men (the antagonists are giving an unfair fight), however appears powerful and defeats them, apart from one who suddenly attacks the protagonist, knocking him unconscious. This also fits in with Richard Dyer's theory that people fit in with their social groups. Our thriller conforms to this theory because the way in which the antagonists behave is as a group and they act intimidating against the sole protagonist. However as they are behaving this way, the protagonist would not fit into this social group as he appears more relaxed and is clearly part of a different social group. The only way in which our thriller does not conform to stereotypes is because it is not clear as to what stereotype the woman fits into as there is only a short clip of where she is involved in the thriller. 

Our thriller does not conform to the traditional structures of feminism. Our thriller does not conform to feminism as it does not include a male gaze figure. The woman in our thriller is seen as the dispatcher and almost the cause of the fight between the good and evil, rather than being seen as a sexual object. You can tell that she is not a male gaze due to the lack of voyeurism and camera angles used to make her appear sexualised. She is also not in a provocative dress code, causing the audience to not be looking at her body but to be looking at what is actually happening the film. This conforms to Laura Mulvey's idea that women are seen as a male gaze and the men are looking at her in a sexual way. As this is traditional of representations of women our thriller therefore conforms to tradition through this. 

Our thriller is also post-modern through the representations of reality. Our thriller conforms to Julian McDougall's theory that media and reality are becoming blurred, therefore changing from tradition. Our thriller shows ways in which media and reality are becoming blurred. Our thriller is not real however can be seen as realistic through the familiar location and the idea of MI5. As MI5 is a real job people may see the way in which our characters act as what a job in MI5 is like, however we have exaggerated the work in which the job entails. As it has been exaggerated it can also been seen as hyper real. Therefore, our thriller conforms to traditional structures because it has that new idea of media and reality becoming blurred into one. 

in conclusion, I think that our thriller conforms to tradition more than it doesn't conform to tradition. I think this because in the way it does conform are more influential on the final film compared to the ways in which it doesn't conform. This is because including stereotypes and marxism are vital when creating the thriller because they are to do with the characters, which are a main focus of the film. Also, as feminism is not a huge part of our clip and the woman in the clip is not seen as a main character this does not have a huge impact on traditional structures. Although the representation of reality does have an impact on the thriller I feel as it does not have a bigger impact on traditional structures of representation compared to marxism and stereotypes. 

Essay Representation on Triller - almost complete

To what extent does your Thriller conform to traditional structures of representations?

Our Thriller does conform to some traditional theories but challenges some that may not conform to the ‘traditional structure.

Marxism is a hegemonic view of society. Michel Maffesoli people within small groups share and have similar dress styles and common behaviours. In my Thriller the males in thriller are dressed in suite for disguise, this may be misplacing man who dresses in suites for work but in Thriller men are typically dressed in suites. The men in Thrillers are normally protruded as being bad/evil. My Thriller doesn’t conform to David Gauntlett as the identities of the characters are constructed and negotiated as the thriller develops.

Feminism includes of masculinity and femininity are socially constructed. Laura Mulvey argues that the dominant point of view is masculine. This is typically making the male stronger then the female. In our Thriller this theory is conformed, as the woman is the one who’s in trouble and the male is portraying the stronger person as he tries to save her. The other male is also portrayed as being strong as he’s blackmailing the other male and at this part the female doesn’t get involved.

Postmodernism in the media would is the difference between reality and media representation.  Baudrillard discussed the concept of hyper reality – we have habits that society creates.

Stereotype – O’Sullivan et Al discusses that stereotype is a label that involves processes and categories. There are stereotypes within my Thriller as it follows the stereotypical role of the female needing to be saved by a male and that she’s the weaker sex within the relationship as she cant protect and lo

Representation Essay Plan - Pre reading

O’Sullivan et al

Stereotypes can be seen in our thriller where the characters can be categorised.

However it is not clear who the protagonist is, and what characters are good or bad. (Tessa Perkins)

Rosalind Brunt

Ideologies are not simply ideas in peoples head but are myths that we live by

our thriller does not go by this theory as we have no mythical parts in it

David Gauntlett

Our thriller does use this theory, we show women to have a weakness in relation to men. This is shown through a kidnapping. This is constructed by the audience as the woman is shown to be weak from the start.

Juilian McDougall

Media and reality have become blurred, this can be also seen in our thriller as it is realistic and happens in todays society (kidnapping)

The realistic location and storyline helps aid reality, but is exaggerated by the use of props like the case file and chains.

Laura Mulvey

Our thriller only contains one woman in the opening sequence. She is not seen as a male gaze.

She could only be seen as a male gaze because she is shown as weak and vulnerable.

Michel Maffesoli

In our thriller these is a theme throughout between the costumes and behaviours. Men are prodimently in suits and the more assertive, whereas the woman is weak and in typical clothing.

Our thriller conforms to the theory as our characters are all similarly dressed to show authority and age, this doesn't separate them but defines their behaviour.

Representation - Essay Plan - Relating It To My Thriller

Marxism- hegemonic view of society -

Fundament inequalities in power between social groups. Groups in power exercise their influence culturally rather then by fource. - concepet has origins in Marxist theory - ruling capitalist class are able to protect their economic interests 

- David Gauntlett 2002 - argues that identities are not given but are constructed and negotiated 

Michel Maffesoli - the idea of urban tribe - members of these small groups share and have similar dress styles and common behaviours 

Ideology - A set of ideas which create a partial and selective view of reality.

Feminism - masculinity and femininity are socially constructed

- ideas about gender are produced and reflected in language (O'Sullivan et al 1998) 

- feminism is a lable that refers to a broad range of views containing one shared assumption - gender inequalities in society, historically masculine power exercised at right of women ta interacts and rights. - objectification of women's body in the media had been constant theme. 

Laura Mulvey - argues that the dominant point of view is masculine. Female body is displayed as male gaze.

Postmodernism - in media saturated world, the distinction between reality and media representations becomes blurred or invisible to us ( Julian McDougall 2009)

Modern period came before - people are concerned with representing reality, but now this gets mixed around and we end up with pastiche, parody and intertextuality. E.g Dominic strinati 1995 

- Baudrillard discussed the concept of hyperreality - we inhabit a society that is no longer made up of anything original 

Merrin - argues that's the media do not reflect and represent reality but instead produce it, employing this simulation to justify their own continuing existence

Stereotype - O'Sullivan et Al 1998 details that a stereotype is a Lable that involved a process of categorisation and evaluation. We can call stereotype shorthand to narratives because such simplistic representations define our understanding or media texts - basically we know who is good and bad/evil 

Martin Baker - basically says that's the stereotype of women typically being there for sex and babies/men being there for work - this is not always true 

Tessa Perkins - Stereotype is not a simple process 

Walter Lippmann - the world wasn't supposed to be so negative but was jus to be and easier ordering process 

Applying Genre To Our Thriller

Myself and Ben both worked together while filming the Thriller of our AS coursework.

Chandler - The setting to our thriller has similar themes to it as actual thrillers on the market as we've filmed it in a town, the men are dressed in business wear. The prop we used was also were shuttle.

Neale - Our Thriller genre is dynamic and develops over time, this is done through the use of dark lighting and a tense sound track.

mittel - we used male and female characters to open our audience wider. Allowing it to sell and be more appropriate to multiple audiences.

Altman - Emotional - gets the audience hooked as woman is kidnapped, giving an intellectual pleasure of asking "Who done it".

Buckingham - we was not just given the genre of thriller, we had to work to make our film look like a thriller a to make it clear to the audience that this is a thriller.

Genre notes

Genre origimally comes from Latin but if from France.  The word genre means type.

All genres have subgenres - These mean they are divided up into more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them specifically their familiar and what become recognisable characteristics.

Steve Neal - stresses that genres are not systems that are processes -they are dynamic and evolve over time.

Generic Characteristics
1.  Typical Mise-En-Scene/Visual Style - lighting, props, setting, location and costume
2   Typical Types of Narrative - Plots, Historical, setting and Set pieces.
3   Generic Types I.E typical characters (do typical male/female roles exist, archetypes)
4   Typical Personnel (directors, producers, actors, stars and auteurs)
5   Typical sound designing (sound design, dialogue, music and sound effect)
6   Typical Editing style

Rick Altman argues that genre offers audiences 'a set of pleasures' - Emotional Pleasures, visceral Pleasures and Intellectual Puzzles.

Emotional Pleasures - offered to the audience of genre films and particularly significant when they generate a strong audience response.

Visceral Pleasures - Elicits a physical effect upon its audience. This can be a feeling of revulsion, kinetic speed or a 'roller coaster road'.

Intellectual Puzzles -film genres such as a thriller or whodunit offer the pleasure in trying to unravel a mystery or puzzle. Pleasure is derived from deciphering the plot and forecasting the end or the being surprised by the unexpected.

Narrative Theories - Pre-Reading

Narrative is commonly known as a structure of a story  which has a beginning, middle and end.

Tim O'Sullivan stresses that all media text must have some kind of story to it. Media texts are ways of telling different stories of people as a group of people or and individual person.

Narrative theory shows that what we experience when reading a text to understand a particular set of constructions and conventions and it's important to be aware of how these constructions are put together.

Important words and meaning;

Narrative - structure to a story 

Diegesis - the fictional space and time implied by the narrative - what's being created e.g the world in which the story takes place.

Verisimilitude - the quality of appearing to be real of true. - Verisimilitude - following the rules of continuity, temporal and space coherence 

 Classical Narritive - Pam Cook

Linerity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of ENIGMA RESOLUTION.

A high degree of narrative closure

A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence

Kate Domaille 

Every story ever told can be fitted into one of eight narrative types. Each of these narrative types has a source, an original story upon which the others are based, These stories are as followed:
Achilles - The fatal flaw
Candide - The indomitable hero
Cinderalla - dream comes true
Circe - The Chase
Faust - Selling your soul
Orpheus - the gift that is taken away
Romeo and Juliet - The love story
Tristan and Iseult - The love triangle

Vladimir Propp concluded that regardless of the individual differences in terms of plot characters and setting, such narratives would share common structural features.

Representation Essay Plan

Marxism:
- Hegemonic view of society - fundamental inequalities in power between social groups. Influence from groups of power are exercised culturally rather than by force. 
Representations are encoded into mass media texts. This is done to reinforce dominant ideologies in society. 

Ideology:
- A set of ideas which produce a partial and selective view of reality. 

Feminism:
- Socially constructed
- Produced and reflected in language (O' Sillivan et al)
- Feminism refers to a broad range of views containing one shared assumption - gender inequalities in society

Post-modernism and representations of reality:
- "In a media saturated world, the distinction between reality and media representations becomes blurred or invisible to us" (Julian McDougall)
- People were concerned with representing reality but now this gets mixed around and we end up with intertextuality. 

Stereotypes:
- Stereotype is a label that involves a process of categorisation and evaluation (O' Sullivan et al)
- The word wasn't supposed to be negative but was just to be an easier ordering process (Walter Lippmann)
- Stereotypes are representations of those who 'belong' to society (Orrin E. Klapp)
- Stereotyping is not a simple process (Tessa Perkins)

Genre Essay and Plan

Abercrombie - Boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable
Steve Neale - Genres are systems not processes - they are dynamic and evolve over time
Mittell - Industries use genre to sell products to audience. Genre allows audiences to make choices

Hybrid genre - more than 1 genre

To what extent does your thriller conform to traditional structures of genre?

Our thriller very strongly follows the traditional structure of genre. Our genre was thriller and to keep to this genre we did not include anything else which could relate to other genres. Our thriller conforms to the genre theories and is a traditional thriller in relation to genre.

In our thriller we only used features in the film which were suitable for thriller, these things are common and expected in a thriller. This relates to Jason Mittell's theory that the genre is what sells to the audience, therefore we have used soundtrack, characters, locations, props etc. which the audience of a thriller will like. Using stereotypical features of a thriller in our film will attract our particular target audience because from looking at previous films we know  that this is what they like. Using this idea also helped us towards just keeping to one genre. This was because of the fear that by including other features which are common in other genres may put our particular target audience off of our thriller. 

Rick Altman has the theory that genres offer some sort of pleasure to the audience, which would be difficult for us to do if we were using more than one genre. As our film is a thriller it offers intellectual puzzles to the audience, pleasuring them as they are trying to figure out the film and therefore become more involved. We did this by not making it clear what was in the envelope and also who the girl or the thugs were. Doing this makes the audience think about the mysteries and makes them more into the film as they want to see what happens at the end. We followed the traditional structure of genre to do this because it may have been very difficult to include this pleasure through multiple genres. This may have been difficult because we would not only have to think of how to pleasure the audience through thriller but we would also have to think of it through other genres, which would still pleasure them. 

Chandler's theory is that a genre must have a purpose. Our film has a purpose, however this is imposed through our genre of thriller. The purpose of our plot is to make the audience feel suspense and be on the edge of their seat. We wanted them to wonder what will happen next and also feel some feeling towards characters in the thriller. If we included another genre in our film it may have been harder to 'thrill' the audience as they could be focused on other aspects of the film. Therefore we have conformed to the traditional structure of genre through this too as I believe it will have a better outcome on fulfilling the purpose of our plot. 

Buckingham has the theory that you have to create the genre in your film and you are not just given it. This is what we have done to obtain the idea of the thriller genre. We have used multiple features in our thriller such as soundtrack and camera angles to create the tension which should be expected in a thriller. Doing this keeps to the traditional structure of genre because to have a hybrid of genres you would need to work even harder to include everything which will show the variation of genres. 

Abercrombie has a theory against the idea of traditional structure as he thinks that genre is steadily dismantling. This means that genres are not the same anymore and more and more films are using a hybrid of genres. Our film does not do this as we stay to one genre and are consistent in using this. We only include MES, sound, camera and editing work which represent the genre of thriller. We did this to make it clear that our film is a thriller genre. If we was to include other features to represent another genre it might make it confusing as to what genre we are aiming for our film to be. Therefore, although Abercrombie suggests the films are falling away from the traditional structure of genre and that genre is 'dismantling', our film goes against this and confides to traditionalism. 

In conclusion, our thriller does conform to the traditional structure of genre and in no way does it go against it. We can see that it conforms because we have clearly and strongly kept to the genre of thriller and have no recollection of any other genre. 

Narrative Theory Essay and Plan

Narrative theorists - ideas to help towards a structure

Structure of narrative can be broken - the old traditional now post traditional 

How far does our thriller use traditional ideas of narrative 

Traditional = modernism 

Post modern - challenges/breaks down structures 

Narrative is just a concept 

The traditional narrative theory is that the film has a beginning, middle and end. However, more recently, films have been going against this and challenge the idea of modernism, often by putting the end at the beginning of a film. There are various theorists that also have ideas about narratives theories, however not all films conform to this. From looking at my thriller and narrative theorists our thriller conforms to the theories and is more of a traditional thriller than a post modern thriller.

Tzetvan Todorov has the theory that narratives have a sequence of equilibrium, disequilibrium and restoration. My thriller conforms to this theory. In my thriller you can see the state of equilibrium where the main character is calming walking along and is alone and appears safe. The state of disequilibrium becomes clear when the thugs and our main character break out into a fight, the restoration is then shown when our main character wakes up, brushes himself down and starts calmly walking away. The state of restoration is also clear as the antagonists are also gone. Pam Cook is another theorist that has a theory that narratives are in a fictional world yet they contain verisimilitude. My thriller also conforms to this theory as also it is a fictional story line however, the story line can been seen as realistic and something which may happen in real life, with the idea of MI5. Pam Cook also has the theory that narratives have some form of cause and effect in the them. My thriller also has this; the envelope is the cause of conflict between our agent and the thugs, with the effect of this being the fight which breaks out. A third narrative theorist is Claude Levi-Strauss and his theory is that in a narrative there is binary opposition. This means that there is contrast between the good and bad, and my thriller has that contrast between the two. The contrast between the good and bad in my thriller is shown as the protagonist is put in a fight against multiple antagonists, showing that they have prepared for this and they want to hurt him. This conforms to Claude's idea that there is no in between of right and wrong, good and bad. Vladimir Propp has the theory that a narrative has one of various types of characters. My thriller includes three of these characters which are hero, villain and dispatcher. The hero in my thriller is our main character who is the MI5 agent; he has a similar character to James Bond who is the hero within his films. The villains are the group of thugs who start the fight and are almost seeking our hero. The dispatcher is the mysterious woman as she takes the envelope from the hero and then sends him on his way; from what I made for my thriller it is not clear whether she is good or bad. Therefore, my thriller does strongly conform to multiple narrative theorists theories. 

However, there are some ways in which my thriller does conform to theories of narrative theorists. Kate Domaille theory is that narratives have a clear narrative type, however the type of my narrative is not clear. You could say that my narrative is 'circe' as there is a victim against the villain, however the victim against the villains in my narrative is really a hero, rather than a victim. As he is such a strong character it is not clear that he is really a victim and that he may have done something in the past to annoy these people which has caused the fight; he may have also stolen the envelope from them which is why they are after him. 

Also, relating back to the theory of Vladimir Propp, although my characters do have the personalities of hero, villain and dispatcher, these personalities have not been confirmed in the title sequence and therefore this may have misled the audience. Therefore it is clear that my thriller does not conform to all narrative theories. 

In conclusion, my thriller conforms to narrative theories more than it does not conform to them. My thriller has the beginning, middle and end sequence which is the traditional way to lay out a narrative. I have given it this sequence rather than put the end at the beginning as in a thriller there is often a twist near the middle or end, so to put the end at the start of the film will spoil the twist. It was also the first film I had made so to make it to the best I could I followed a simpler way to make it at more of a basic level. I also used a lot of the theories as this makes it clearer it is a thriller and entices the audience.