Contents
This
booklet will take you through the various areas of theory to do with film and
television and also introduce you to the practical project that will make up
your coursework for the AS later in the year.
What is narrative?
Narrative is the art of storytelling, something we all do
every day. It is an important part of our lives and something that we value
highly, if you consider the amount of time we all spend in front of television
and cinema screens receiving narratives. This booklet will cover a number of the
ways that this process goes on in films and television. Much of this booklet
covers a number of ideas from a book called Visible Fictions by John Ellis. Your
teacher may choose to go through sections of this book in more detail than has
been included here.
What makes cinema
different from other forms of Media?
People often talk about film and television as if they are
the same thing, but in fact they are very different in a number of ways. Many of
the statements that follow may seem obvious, but they have important
implications:
What we see:
Sitting in a cinema we are presented with a large scale and
highly detailed photographic image. The screen in all of its detail is virtually
the only thing that we look at. T.V. on the other hand, involves looking at low
quality images on a small screen which occupies a corner of the room. The size
of the cinema screen and the fact that we can see little else means that we
notice the tiniest things in the picture. Our eyes flicker about the screen
searching for meaning and the clever film-maker can try to anchor the meaning of
the images by pushing our gaze all over the screen as we look for what is
important. Because our eyes are so busy, our minds are kept working as well and
as we have so much choice over where to look we can’t be forced into one
meaning. It is almost as if we negotiate the meaning of what we see with the
makers of the film. We are working actively in making sense of what we are
seeing.
How we see it:
In the cinema we are generally in a state of intense and
relatively sustained attention. Think about this for a moment. The average film
is about two hours long- a very long time to concentrate and yet there is
something about the cinema which gives a film in this setting the power to take
us over for this amount of time. Again think about the situation at home in
front of the TV when you probably have all kinds of things distracting you from
what you are trying to watch.
Where we see it:
We go into a large room with lots of strange people and
they turn the lights off! There is an obvious sense of occasion about going to
see a film. We are surrounded by lots of people so there is a sense of
community, like at a football match
or a concert, but at the same time we don’t know who most of them are and even
if we are with friends we are unlikely to talk to them as much as normal. It’s
a strange mix between loneliness and belongingness. This may all sound
ridiculous but there is obviously something enjoyable about the cinema itself
rather than just any particular film. Sometimes you might just feel like seeing
a film, regardless of what film it is. Going to the cinema is an occasion. Again
if you make the comparison with TV, it probably takes a lot more to get people
excited about a show on TV, than about going out to see a film at the cinema.
What do the filmmakers
expect of you?
To summarise, because
of all of these things, the makers of the film can expect you to be in quite a
different state of mind to someone who just happens to be watching the film on
TV at home. You will be expectant and curious, anxious to find out the solutions
to the problems the characters face (the resolution of the problematic)
What effect does all of
this have on the film makers?
Because they have you stuck there, excited and
concentrating, they want to keep you in this same state as long as they can so
the narrative of the film needs to be tightly organized and based around a
single problem that will interest you and keep your concentration. This is the
theory of the problematic which you will spend a lot of time this term studying.
TASK
The first time I ever explained these ideas to a class,
one of the students said “John Ellis obviously doesn’t live in Romford!”
Think about this for a moment: Does this version of the typical viewing
conditions of a film relate to your experiences in the cinema. Which bits fit
and which bits don’t?
The film itself-
Once you get into a film- the main business of
understanding the narrative comes into play and the rest of this booklet will
cover this. It starts as you do, with the opening of the film. Syd Field the
American screenwriter has said that in any good film, the audience will be
grabbed by the first ten minutes- in that short time it is up to the film-makers
to interest the audience while at the same time alerting them to what the film
will be about and giving them a sense of what kind of film they have let
themselves in for. In the terms of what you have been reading, the first ten
minutes should be the beginning of the process of revealing the enigma behind
the narrative image of the film.
Short units of
narrative- sequences of shots
Of course reading about a film loses so much- the main
impact of a film and the way that it tells a story is not in the words of the
script, but in the look of the film- the way it moves from shot to shot- the
visual dimension.
Look at this set of pictures. At first sight it seems
clearly to be showing a man being chased by a car, the missing frame, we
imagine, is the one where the car hits him and runs him down, but why? The same
shots could be showing a man chasing after a car, the missing shot being of a
gun-shot from the car mowing him down. Why do we even assume that the car and
the man have anything to do with each other?
We call a series of shots like this a sequence and it is a
part of the language of film that we are all very used to- this is why we all
see the same story in the pictures. We are used to seeing sequences like this
which move back and forth between two characters and making the connections
between them. Think about another example- we watch a man getting out of a car
and looking up at a building, we then cut to another shot from inside a building
of the same man walking in. No-one could doubt that it is the same building, the
sequence of shots implies this.
As you analyse sequences of shots in class, you should look
at the ways that you are led to follow the action in certain directions. A good
director will often push you and the narrative in interesting ways, using our
expectations of narrative to confuse us. So in Halloween, for example, the types
of shot used often imply to us that the killer is present and that the narrative
is about to move on to a murder when in fact he is no-where near.
When you look at shots, you need also to look beyond just
their sequence, to examine how their varying lengths and the type of shot used
affect our sympathies and raise excitement. The set of shots of the car chase
are very boring and static as they are, but could be made into an exciting
sequence if they were used more imaginatively.
Causality
All of these different sequences are joined together into a
general structure of the film. They are joined together in a pattern which is
called causality- one thing leads to another which leads to another. As you
watch any film, you should be able to plot the pattern of causality throughout
it, watching a structure develop of events providing the seeds for other events
throughout the film. The best account of how this works to produce an overall
structure for a film is given by the American screenwriter Syd Field in his book
Screenplay.
Syd Field is an American Screenwriter who has made a lot of
money during the last few years out of the theory you are about to read. This is
because, unlike the other theories in this booklet, his ideas are not just
intended as a way of analysing existing films, but also as a set of advice for
potential film makers.
Broadly, Field’s ideas can be summarised in the following
diagram:
The typical Hollywood film, according to Field can be
separated into three separate dramatic sections or acts: the setup, the
confrontation and finally resolution. To move the action on from one act to
another there are what he calls plot points- particularly important pieces of
the plot, which turn around the lives of the characters, change their
relationships with others and alter the tone of the film. Of course, films often
have a number of plot points such as these, but Field points to two major ones
between the acts and a less important one at the middle of the film.
In many ways this act is the most important for Field. He
claims that within the first ten minutes in particular, the audience will decide
whether they like the film and will normally be unwilling to change their minds
later. It is therefore vital for the film-maker to give the audience a sense in
those ten minutes what the film is going to be about, who the main character is
and why they should care about him/her and what they can expect in terms of
style. In the rest of the first thirty minutes, the audience should learn the
nature of the problem facing the hero although this can be left all the way to
plot point one.
In this longest act of the film we see the main character
in a number of more and more extreme problem situations where they confront
their enemies normally quite helplessly. Often there will be a mid-point where
they begin to turn things around and win what looked like a helpless struggle,
but there is still a long way to go and at plot point two they will realise that
the way they have been going about things is not working and they will be ready
for…
The hero will finally take control in the struggles with
their problems (often by going to confront the enemy on their own home
territory) and will achieve a final, decisive victory.
For the first act of the film we see Keanu Reeves
doing his work as a policeman and socialising with his friends- we learn enough
about him to know that he is brave and likeable. The first ten minutes are an
early action sequence, which prepare us for the style of what follows and also
introduce the villain who will return at plot point one. At this plot point,
Reeves’ peaceful world is destroyed as he learns about the bomb on the bus
that he has to deal with.
The second act follows Reeves’ at first hopeless
attempts to save the people on the bus. A love interest- Sandra Bullock, is also
introduced. At around the middle of the film he realises the workings of the
camera on the bus, which allow him to trick the villain and get the people off
to safety. The bus then explodes- providing a neat plot point.
The third act is the final confrontation. Reeves
goes to face the villain on his own territory and also discovers that he has
kidnapped the love interest making a final battle inevitable.
If you read Syd Field’s original book, you will see that
he makes great claims for the accuracy of his scheme- even saying that the
timings are exact. If you sit in the cinema with a watch on, you will often be
astonished how close many formula Hollywood movies are to these ‘rules’ but
at the same time many recent films have adapted Field’s scheme. In fact, if
you were to time Speed, you would find that the first and last acts are only
twenty minutes long and the middle an hour and twenty. Whether this should
bother us as much a it probably upsets Field is another matter, but it does
suggest something about recent trends in action movies where anything that gets
in the way of the explosions is seen as being time wasting.
Field is writing in a time when the vast majority of
Hollywood films are principally targeted at a male audience and his language of
confrontation seems particularly to suit films which are as full of testosterone
as Speed. However, if you consider terms like ‘confrontation’ to fit any
kind of dramatic situation, the theory could just as easily be applied to a
romantic comedy such as ‘When Harry met Sally’ with its amiable bickering as
a blood bound gore-fest for boys.
This has been the main criticism of Field. Making films is
an extremely expensive business and when it was published in the eighties,
appearing to offer the answer to how to produce a sure-fire hit, Syd Field’s
book was at first treated like the bible. Some Hollywood studios actually
produced contracts for film-makers which ordered that all films should be
between One hour fifty and two hours thirteen minutes long. There is no doubt
that this kind of thing had a stifling effect on creativity- directors such as
Martin Scorsese have complained about being bullied into re-jigging their films
into Field’s structure. More recently there has been a backlash as people have
pointed to the popularity of films, which appear to veer from Field’s scheme
such as Pulp Fiction, Magnolia and Dazed and Confused as proof that his rules
aren’t needed.
The Problematic
You could say that Field’s ideas are too slick to work in
all cases, but if you try to apply them to the films you see this term, and
indeed the whole of the course, you will be amazed at how neatly they do fit.
Take Fatal Attraction as an inevitable example. Act one establishes Dan in his
normal life and then shows him risking it all by sleeping with Alex. Act two
shows the growing tension as she tries to stay
in his life and act three shows him fight and defeat her. The plot points
that move the film on from one act to another are as follows. Plot point one is
when Alex slashes her wrists- this moves the action on from act to act because
it shows to us and to Dan that this is not just a harmless fling, but something
dangerous. Plot point two is the infamous bunny death, because in the same way
this moves Dan on to a full realisation that Alex has to be stopped and forces
him to take action. Incidentally, I haven’t timed these, but my guess would be
that they fit into his timings.
It is a good idea now to look in more detail at what is
happening in the most important first act of the film. Remember that this is the
part of the film when Field said the audience needs to get an idea of what is
going on and what the film is going to be about. In Fatal Attraction we see
Dan’s life as it normally is, being disrupted by a problem- a tempting woman,
Alex, who will destroy his normal life. The film will follow the course of him
resolving this problem and returning his life to some kind of normality. This is
what John Ellis in his book Visible Fictions calls the theory of the
problematic. It is another all-embracing theory which can be applied to any
film.
The theory of the
problematic
A film, unlike a television series has a very limited time
to tell a story and the makers of film narratives therefore need to narrow down
their plot to one individual story- a problem which the film sets up close to
the start and which will be resolved by the end. That is not to say that there
won’t be other problems on the way, but there
will clearly be one central concern which will form the main part of the
narrative and which should be enough to keep the audience interested- they
should want the problem to be solved.
If you ever get asked what a film is about, you will almost
certainly describe the problematic in your answer- “It’s about a shark
terrorising a seaside resort, a serial killer who has to be caught, a heroin
addict. Etc.” Sharks, serial killers and heroin are all problems that have to
be solved. For there to be a problem, we have to have a sense of what life was
like before the problem so films will often start with the narrative in a state
of calm or equilibrium. At the start of Jaws we see a group of teenagers playing
around on the beach- everything is calm and idyllic and then along comes a
problem which starts biting them. At the start of Fatal Attraction we see the
calm of Dan’s family life which will be destroyed by the problem of Alex. Many
film-makers today feel that this idea of setting up a normal world and then
disrupting it with a problem is too unsubtle so they will often go straight for
the problem. However, there will always be a sense in the film of what life was
like before the problem came along and therefore what the characters can return
to if they can only sort the problem out.
Ideology
Looking at the problematic is a good way of spotting the
ideology of the film- if you can recognise the problematic, you can see what the
film is against. So Jaws is saying that nature is dangerous, Trainspotting is
anti-heroin and Fatal Attraction anti-women. This last example is depressingly
common- there are an enormous number of films, from Basic Instinct to Aliens to
Star Trek - First Contact where the problem is a woman who has to be sorted out.
The way the problematic is sorted out also helps us understand the ideology. In
Victorian times most novels ended with the loose ends being tied up and the
problematic resolved by a marriage- this was the ultimate solution for their
society. How will people look back at our society which is represented in films
which end with the violent deaths of women who dare to be different as in Fatal
Attraction or even Thelma and Louise.
Ideology is a key concept of the course and just as ideas
like representation and audiences, you should be thinking about ideology all the
time. A couple of things to remember:
You will not find a media text without an ideology although
you will probably be able to think of ones where you can’t spot what the
ideology is. Unfortunately, the examiner will notice if you don’t
mention ideology
One reason why you might miss the ideology in a text is if
it is part of the dominant ideology. If a text only seems to be saying what
“everyone takes for granted” it might not seem worth pointing out -but it
is.
A good way of spotting ideology is through looking at
things like the representation of main characters as you did with Fatal
Attraction, or at the narrative. If you look at the problematic, for example you
will often be able to make an ideological point- the problem in Jaws is a shark-
Jaws is about the dangerous side of nature, the problem in Fatal Attraction is
Alex, Fatal Attraction is saying
that single women are evil.
Once you have spotted the problematic, you should be able
to look in more detail at how this is produced. Once again, remember how we did
this in Fatal Attraction, looking at the mise en scene, the shots used, the
editing, the soundtrack and so on -all of which reinforced the idea that Alex
was evil and Beth good and therefore helped produce the film’s ideology.
Finally- remember ideology is probably the most difficult
thing you will write about. The examiner will not be looking for a “right
answer.” Instead s/he will simply be impressed to see that you are thinking
ideologically and that whatever point of view you take, you are able to back it
up with the detail of your analysis.
Some examples of the
dominant ideology to look for:
The following is not by
any means a complete list of the features of the dominant ideology that you may
find, but it may help.....
1. The ideology of the
family and family values:
·
Ideally children should grow up with
two married heterosexual parents and one or two brothers and sisters.
·
Marriage is the ideal kind of
relationship.
·
Sex outside of marriage is a bad
thing particularly when it is casual.
2. The ideology of
materialism/consumerism:
·
Buying things and having lots of
money are ways to achieve happiness.
3. The ideology of the
work ethic:
·
Hard work is not just a way of
becoming successful, but is a good thing in itself.
·
Those who choose not to work hard
should be looked down on- “work-shy layabouts”
4. The ideology of self
determination:
·
People should not rely on anyone
else or society to help them through life, they should achieve things for
themselves.
·
It is quite possible for anyone to
be successful if they are willing to try.
5. The ideology of
deference:
·
We should have respect for those who
are in authority over us.
6. The ideology of sexual
difference:
·
Women and men have very different
abilities in almost everything they do.
In general the abilities of
men are greater when it really matters.
Narrative and Ideology-
the link
When we are studying narrative
it can seem a meaningless exercise. Just spotting the plot points in a narrative
doesn’t seem to tell us much about what the film is really saying. Instead, it
may just seems to be exposing the mechanics of plot structuring which is more
useful for screenwriters than any one else.
In fact the opposite is true:
the study of narrative can take us to the heart of the film so that by looking
carefully at the structuring of a
narrative we can get a clearer understanding of the themes and ideology of the
film.
I can perhaps make this
clearer if I start by analysing a simpler narrative than any you have studied-
the story of Little Red Riding Hood. If I try to use the same techniques as you
might do with a film, I find the following:
The opening-
the story is set up with Little Red Riding Hood in a state of equilibrium in the
calm world of the home. She is given a task to perform and an instruction
“Keep to the path and don’t talk to strangers.” The moral of this,
if we consider it with the rest of the narrative, is that we should listen to
our parents.
Plot point one-
Little Red Riding Hood meets a wolf in the forest, but stupidly trusts him. The
technique of dramatic irony is used here because we know that she is in
danger, but she doesn’t. This reinforces a second moral- that nature is
dangerous.
The ending-
Little Red Riding Hood is saved by the woodcutter. This reinforces the moral
that children should rely on adults and introduces a new one that men are
stronger than women and can protect them.
The problematic
of the narrative is the wolf itself- a symbol of the danger of nature which can
only be sorted out by someone whose job is to keep nature under control- a
woodcutter.
I could go on in this manner
using Vogler’s theory for example to reveal further the morals of the story.
The truth is that these morals which would be either consciously or
sub-consciously be learned by the child audience of the fairy tale are what
adults would call ideology and importantly they are most apparent in exactly the
key moments which narrative theory tells you to look at. The narrative of the
story is a kind of journey that the audience go through where every important
point in the narrative reinforces the ideological message of the story.
The same process works
equally well with Fatal Attraction:
The film opens
with a detailed establishment of the joys of Dan’s home-life- the moral
is that the traditional family is the natural situation that we should all want
to be in.
The problematic
of the film is Alex Forrest who stands for the dangers of single women and extra
marital sex.
Plot point one
is the moment when she slashes her wrists. This is important for the film
because it is precisely when her role becomes ideologically clear- up to this
point we might have thought that the affair was just fun but we learn at plot
point one of her problematic nature.
The rest of the film
is a kind of journey from events (Single dangerous Alex causing trouble
to Dan’s traditional family) to actions (the family in the form of Dan
and finally his wife fighting back)
The ending of the film,
is the resolution of the problematic- the single woman must be destroyed and the
last shot of the film is of the family snapshot reinforcing the moral of the
film.
You may notice that I have
left out of all of this discussion the second plot points from Syd Field’s
structure. This is because by this late in the film, we should already have a
clear understanding of the ideological message of the narrative and the second
plot point therefore rarely introduces anything ideologically surprising. By
this point we should be in sympathy with the ideology of the narrative and
should be waiting eagerly for an ideologically satisfying conclusion to the
story.
The Two Goal plot
David Siegel has taken the idea of the problematic further
to suggest that rather than one problem, the typical Hollywood film these days
has two central problems. The following section is taken from an article by him
on the Internet:
The Single-goal Plot
In a single-goal plot, the protagonist has one problem to
solve from the point of commitment to the end of the film. Accomplishing a
single goal will solve the overall problem. The African Queen, Raider’s of the
Lost Ark, The River Wild, and Star Trek: Generations, are well known single-goal
films (most are not well known, since they don’t tend to stay in theatres very
long). While single-goal, or linear, stories used to suffice, today’s film
consumers don’t find them stimulating enough. They find these stories
predictable and flat. In today’s market, they are a bad investment. Yet
studios continue to make a surprising number of single-goal films each year.
The Two-goal Plot
In contrast, most films we see these days have a two-goal
plot. This involves the protagonist striving for the false goal, then learning
something that changes the whole situation and going for the real goal to save
the day in the end. The reversal of the protagonist’s goal takes the entire
story in a legitimate new direction half-way through the film.
Let’s look at some examples:
In E.T., the Extraterrestrial, Elliot’s first goal is to
keep E.T. as a friend; his second goal (minute 53 of 107) is to help him get
home.
In Jurassic Park, Alan Grant’s first goal is to verify
the safety of the park; his second goal (minute 88 of 119) is to get Ellie and
the kids to safety after he discovers the dinosaur eggs and the natural tendency
for the dinosaurs to get out of control.
In Star Wars, Luke’s first goal is to get R2-D2 to the
rebel base for analysis; his second goal (minute 94 of 115) is to destroy the
Death Star by dropping a bomb in the right place.
Over 190 of the top-200 money-making films of all time have
two-goal plots. Steven Spielberg hasn’t made a single-goal film in twelve
years. Though it may sound obvious,
no one uses this goal-oriented method of plot development.
TASK
Siegel goes on to explain the dual goals from the
following films: Home Alone, The Return of the Jedi, The Lion King, Batman,
Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and Mrs Doubtfire. If you know these films try
to spot their two goals. Otherwise try with any other film you have seen
recently.
Repetition and Novelty
The problematic and its resolution will be central to the
journey of the narrative from the start to finish, but obviously on the way
there will be a lot else going on. Event will lead on to event according to
patterns of causality. This can be a very confusing process with an enormous
number of things going on for the audience to take in. This process is made
comprehensible for the audience because of what Ellis calls repetition and
novelty
To understand this I need to return you to some of the
ideas at the start of the booklet. If you think about
a comparison with television, film-makers have advantages and
disadvantages placed before them when they are trying to create a comprehensible
narrative. On the plus side, they have the enormous amount of concentration and
interest of their audience at the start of the movie- totally different to a
distracted television audience. On the down side, everything in film is new,
unfamiliar and confusing. If you watch Only Fools and Horses on TV, you know all
about the characters, settings and the kinds of things that happen, before you
switch on. A film is completely different, as the lights go down and the film
starts it is as if you are entering an unfamiliar world where everything will
have to be explained to you patiently if the narrative is to make sense. At the
start of the film, in particular, the filmmakers will have to lead us gently
through the narrative, giving us clear sign posts to what is important and what
we can ignore in the jumble of images that passes before our eyes. One important
part of this is in the visual and aural language of the film- key characters can
receive more camera shots and can speak louder, key events can be sign-posted by
sound-track music so that we don’t miss them . However, by far the most
important tool of the film-maker is repetition. If we see something several
times, it will make more sense in our minds and we will feel it is important. In
the narrative of the film there are three types of repetition:
* genre repetition
This should be familiar to you from last term. The world of
the film can be less alarmingly unfamiliar if the audience can be made to feel
at home by reminders of other examples of the genre.
* Cultural repetition of “typical” scenes and
people.
At the start of Seven you may not recognise these streets
of this city and these people, but you are well aware from living in the
twentieth century what an American city looks like and you will have
stereotypical ideas of what policemen
are like. The film-makers can present you with repetition of standard
representations to make you feel comfortable so that the narrative can move on.
A good example of how this works is the opening of Hitchcock’s North by
Northwest where we are presented with a number of culturally familiar
representations of American city life- we immediately feel at home in the world
of the main character.
* Internal repetition
This is probably the most important way that the film
narrative is made comprehensible for us. We are simply presented with
repetitions throughout the film of the same people encountering the same kind of
situations and reacting in the same ways. Ellis calls this an economic system in
the sense that it saves time for the filmmaker- by having events which soon
become familiar it allows the narrative to move on more quickly. Another example
from North by Northwest will help to explain this. The first time that Thornhill
is taken out to Townsend’s house in the country we are given a long shot of
the house which is held for several seconds and we then watch as the car travels
up the driveway. The place is established in our mind so that later when the
location is repeated we only need to see it briefly for us to recognise where we
are- the system is economic. This kind of pattern is common in all films, the
second time we see something the filmmakers do not need to spend so long setting
it up.
All three of these kinds of repetition are most common in
the first act of the film when things are most potentially confusing for us.
Later on, as we become more comfortable, the director is able to bring in new
elements (novelty.) For the rest of the film there will be a delicate balance of
repetition and novelty. I say delicate because if the balance is not achieved
the film’s narrative will not work - too much novelty and the narrative will
be incomprehensible, too much repetition and it will be boring- you can probably
think of films that fit into both categories.
If you think of a comparison with television you can see
that the same kind of pattern of repetition and novelty exists but it is the
other way round. Any film is essentially made up of novelty- it is an
independent individual text, unlike anything else you have seen before. All of
the repetition is there to help you make sense of it. In T.V. on the other hand,
the basis of the narrative is the repetition- each week in sit-coms, chat-shows,
soaps and even the news, the same kinds of event take place. The enjoyment for
us in the narrative comes from the predictability of this repetition and then
seeing how elements of novelty are blended in, new twists are brought in to
bring variation to the formula.
Plot or emotional story
While I am talking about the enjoyment we get from the
story it is worth considering another feature of what it is that we enjoy about
the narrative- something that becomes clear if we try to make a distinction
between the plot- the simple events of the narrative, and the emotional story-
the changes that happen in the personality of the main character during the
course of the narrative. An article I found on the Internet by Richard Michaels
explained this like this:
“An emotional story focuses on the transformations of a
character’s values, interpersonal relationships, and code of behaviour as he
faces conflict while pursuing his objective. The character’s emotional
reactions to events and the actions of other characters are essential elements
in the story.
A plot is the series of events that occur from the
beginning of the cinematic experience to its conclusion. It is a description of
things that happen to the characters, and is not concerned with the
character’s emotional reactions. To describe a plot is to list all the events
that occur in a chronological order.
audiences have more appreciation for a “well-constructed
emotional story” than “a complex plot”. While the latter may be
intellectually challenging, the former is more emotionally engrossing and
produces a much higher degree of audience empathy for the characters.
The audience finds “over-plotted” films to be unsatisfactory because
there is not enough change and development in the personal lives of the
characters. These distinctions also will be fruitful in helping us to define the
structures necessary for a film to be a “satisfying emotional experience.”
Think of the Star Wars trilogy as an example of these- the
plot is intricate and fascinating but what ultimately makes the films so warm is
the emotional story of Luke Skywalker and his growth to maturity and in the
final film the resolution of his relationship with his father.
This distinction between emotional story and plot will be
particularly useful when you think about the film Seven- here the plot may be
what first hooks us into the film, but it is the emotional journey of Somerset
through the film that keeps us interested and that also stops the film from
ultimately being completely bleak.
TASK
Think of three films that you know fairly well- what is
the emotional story rather than the plot of these films.
Looking in more detail
at narrative- Binary Oppositions
All stories have characters that we sympathise with and
those we dislike- at a more ideological level, they are presenting us with
examples of good and evil. Furthermore, because narratives are often in the
business of simplifying in order to make sense, they will often present us with
good and evil as straightforward opposites. Indeed some people have spent a lot
of time looking at narratives in terms of oppositions. This is partly a
reflection of the way the human mind works, we like to see the world neatly, and
psychologists have found that this often results in us polarising ideas or
people into opposites- good/bad, old/young, beautiful/ugly, male/female. films
reflect this and you can find a lot about the ideology of a film if you try to
produce a list of the same kind. The average western, for example works like
this:
Homesteaders
Indians
white
red
Christian
pagan
domestic
savage
helpless
dangerous
weak
strong
clothed
naked
All drama works through conflict so this kind of binary
opposition is essential to make the film interesting and to help us decide who
we are loyal to, but it obviously has big ideological implications. If you have
seen Dances with Wolves, you can see how that film takes some of the same
oppositions and swaps them round so that a different ideological representation
of the Indians is given. Also in making the film, the director can go to great
lengths to show what is good and bad in these oppositions, so the paganism of
the violent human-sacrificing Indians in traditional westerns changes to the
mystical, noble paganism of the heroes of Kostner’s film.
The binary opposition theory is another which should be
applicable to all of the films you study on the course. The narrative of the
film will be made from the meeting and inevitable clash of these opposites- that
will produce the problematic and the resolution will come from the clash being
sorted out, either by the destruction of one of the opposites as in Fatal
Attraction or Jaws or by some kind of compromise between them. An example of
this is the film Seven. Here, one of the oppositions is between the optimistic
love of humanity as seen in the Brad Pitt character and the pessimistic hatred
of humanity which is felt by the killer. The two oppositions are resolved in the
ending where the Morgan Freeman character who has always been unfriendly and
pessimistic, realises that he can mix his distaste for the people around him in
the dreadful world of the film with a wish to continue in his work of trying to
save them
The binary oppositions don’t just play themselves out in
the narrative of a film, they are normally a big part of the iconography of the
film- you can see them up on the screen, symbolised by mise en scene, and the
whole look of the film. So in Fatal Attraction, the opposite worlds of the
family and the single woman are clearly shown in the different houses that we
see the characters in. If you consider one of the oppositions between Dan and
Alex in this film you can see how this works: Dan, as a man is presented as
being rational while Alex is emotional, a typical representation of the
different genders in film which is demonstrated by her listening to opera music
in her flat, and wild Brazilian music when she goes out. Dan really should
realise that even the film’s soundtrack is warning him which side of the
binary opposition between men and women she is on.
Events or actions
One binary opposition which should probably be at the front
of your mind whenever you study a film is between actions and events. These may
seem like the same thing- once again Richard Michaels on the Internet explains
this better than I can:
An action is something that a character does to himself, an
object, or another character. An event is something that happens to the
character, something that impacts him, and over which he has little control.
Being hit by a car is an event, but the antagonist intentionally hitting another
character is an action.
Drama is not about accidental events that happen to
individuals. It is about how the characters react to these events. It is also
about characters making decisions under conflict and performing actions while in
pursuit of an objective that represents fundamental human values.
In a film like Halloween our sympathy for Laurie grows more
and more as she becomes responsible for actions in the narrative and is no
longer the slave of events as her friends are. You can see this process in any
of the films you watch and it is something that ties together all of the
theories in this booklet:
* The problematic is an event which is resolved by the action
of the protagonist.
* Repetition in the narrative may sometimes take the form
of an event which is repeated as an action of the protagonist. So,
for example, we first see the event of Thornhill being dragged to the
country house in North by Northwest, then, when the scene is repeated, he is acting
and taking the police there.
* Campbell’s journey is one where events push the
hero out of the ordinary world and force him/her to act in the unfamiliar
new world of the narrative.
* Field’s plan begins with an opening of events including
the first plot point. Somewhere in the middle act this will normally change and
the second major plot point will push the hero into a climax of action.
TASK
Choose a couple of films that you know well and make a
list of major actions and events involving their main character- am I right that
the events are mainly in the first hall and the actions in the second?
When you begin to study television narrative, you will find
much this familiar – a typical television programme will contain a mixture of
action and events, there will be a plot and an emotional story, binary
oppositions and often even some kind of three-act structure.
Because of all of this it can become easy to forget about the
distinctions between television and film—in fact they are very different
forms.
To consider why television is so different we start as we
did with film by looking at the conditions of reception – where and how do we
watch television.
Almost exclusively, we watch TV at home.
Think about the differences between the typical home environment and the
cinema. There is very little chance
to concentrate here – homes are places full of distractions and the tiny
television in the corner of a room has none of the power to take over all of
your senses that a film screen has. Much research has suggested that while the
television is on for large amounts of time in the average household, attention
is very rarely truly focused on it. In fact most of us make choices over which
shows to watch attentively and what we can treat as ‘wallpaper TV.’ There is
also some research that suggests that there are gender differences when it comes
to attention being paid, with women being more likely to multi-task while the TV
is on and men being more obsessively attentive.
Television narrative has evolved in a way that takes all of
this into account. Television
producers know that they do not have our undivided attention and so instead of
the long sweep of a cinema narrative, the typical television programme, whether
fiction or non-fiction works in segments of about five minutes. Although these
segments work together to create a longer narrative, the idea is that they can
also make sense on their own. Unlike
a film, a television programme can be picked up quite easily at almost any
point.
A typical example of this would be a soap where in any one
episode no single storyline is allowed to dominate.
The narrative moves smoothly from one group of people to another every
few minutes. Similarly in television news, no one story lasts very long.
This is one reason why some critics believe that television
is a “dumbed down” medium with a superficial and hurried mode of narrative
which never requires the audience to think deeply about anything.
In contrast, the slower narrative of films is one of the reasons for that
medium’s higher status.
If a television narrative is intended to be easy to pick
up, the producers also knows that there is much more of a risk that you are
going to drop the programme at the end of the segment so television narrative is
full of lots of hooks to keep you viewing from segment to segment. Cliffhangers
and competitions, which continue after an advertising break, are examples of
this.
It’s worth considering now how we react to this kind of
segmented narrative when we sit down to watch an evening’s television.
Whatever we watch during that evening- be it neighbours, the news, game shows or
top of the pops will be made up of these segments and if we are watching
anything other than the BBC, the programmes will be broken up even further by
shorter segments of advertising. One possibility is that over the course of the
evening these segments will start to blur together so that the adverts might
resemble the soaps or the news look like a game show. The critic Raymond
Williams called this concept ‘flow’. He claimed that the television becomes
meaningless because none of the different segments are given enough time to mean
anything on their own. Instead the only way that they make sense at all is for
the different segments to flow together so that everything resembles everything
else. So soaps mix with documentaries to become docusoaps, science fiction
series like Star Trek start to deal with relationship issues so that they too
begin to resemble soaps and the news begins to feature funny items so that it
becomes like a comedy sketch show. In the end the whole of television becomes
homogenised- everything looks the same as everything else. This is another major
part of the theory that TV is ‘dumbing down’.
Earlier we looked at the idea that it was televisions place
within the home that led to this segmented narrative style, but the effects of
television’s domestic nature do not stop there. One important result is that
television tends to favour very domestic subject matter. Think of the number of
programmes of all kinds that are based around ‘typical’ heterosexual
relationships, marriage, masculine careers or feminine domesticity. It could be
said that television’s place in the home leads to programmes being based
around quite mainstream ideology. Certainly it leads to censorship with the
potential of a family audience for all shows before the watershed resulting in
many restrictions being placed upon broadcasters over content.
The style of television is also very different because of
the domestic audience- rather than the visual excitement that is at the heart of
film, television is based around sound. This is partly because television is
lower budget than film, but it also allow for straying eyes in the typical low
attention household to be drawn back to the screen by stimulating sounds.
Typically these noises are that most domestic of sound-forms, conversation. TV
has so much of this that we even have a name for conversation in the medium-
‘talking heads.’
Because television has so much chatter, it means that what
we see on the screen has to focus on these people who are talking to us-
television visuals are stripped down with all the lush mise en scene of the film
world replaced with fairly bare settings (cheap again!) What we see instead are
a preponderance of close ups of the speakers. Because this is visually less
interesting than the rich visuals of film, television tends to favour quick
cutting from shot to shot to avoid boredom and the ever-present risk of channel
hopping.
You could link this to the idea of plot and emotional story
we covered earlier. In film these two strands are often quite separate in the
narrative of a film with the excitement of the plot running along at the same
time as the more domestic emotional story. For example in Speed whether Keanu
Reeves ends up kissing Sandra Bullock is really quite a separate concern from
whether he saves the people on the bus Television’s conversational mode of
story telling tends to link the two things together more- if you are dealing
with discussions and arguments rather than gun battles and explosions, plot and
emotional story tend to merge together so that in a soap for example the rows
between the characters that move create the dramatic plot twists and
cliff-hangers are the emotional story.
This conversational and domestic style of TV also has
effects on our feelings about the stars and the programmes. Television
personalities seem more like parts of our everyday lives than the out of this
world stars of films. In the same way, television programme seem more immediate
and believable. In films realism has to come from the visuals, which whether in
space or amazing locations have to look believable. Television gets its realism
more from the believability of its character interactions and also crucially
from the sense that it is live
The sense that television is live, that the characters on
the screen are living their lives out in front of us, is central to its nature
as a domestic medium. We take it for granted that shows like the news and sports
broadcasts are live but in fact the whole medium tries to create the sense that
events unfold on the screen in real time. Think of how the events in a soap seem
to be carrying on at the same time as we are watching- when you switch off
between episodes, there is a sense that life in the world of the soap carries on
and when you watch, seasonal
features, comments about the news and even current chart music help to create
the live feel. Recently, shows like Big Brother with it’s round the clock web
broadcasts have taken this idea even further.
This live feel is particularly evident if you consider the
working of a typical segment of a television show. Imagine a character walking
toward their house opening the door and going in to say hello to their wife. In
a film we might see the man approach the house and then cut to a few minutes
later when he was sitting at the dinner table with his family. The cinema has no
wish to appear live and cuts out dead time. In the television segment, on the
other hand, we would typically see the whole journey through the door and to the
wife all in order to keep the illusion that what we were seeing was live. There
might be shot changes to keep it interesting, but the sense that we were seeing
things in real time would remain.
This live feel strengthens the sense mentioned earlier that
the characters in television are more immediately present in our lives than film
stars. It allows the talking heads on TV to address us in ways that would never
happen in film and it creates a closer relationship between viewer and text.
Think of the phone-ins that fill the television schedules or all the programmes,
which feature members of the audience. Even in fiction like the sitcom, there is
a sense of the audience’s presence in the studio in the canned laughter, which
would feel totally out of place in the cinema.
John Ellis has suggested that the different relationship
that we have with television means that it loses the voyeuristic nature of
cinema. Voyeurism is the idea of spying on behaviour that we really shouldn’t
be seeing and is central to the experience of cinema. The long cuts of some film
sequences together with the situation of the viewer in the dark watching the
distant figures on the screen all lead to this sense in film. In television,
instead, we do not have this relationship with what we see- quick cuts and the
sense that the characters almost know that we are there destroy it.
All this emphasis on segments and the idea of the instant
accessibility of television programmes should not allow us to ignore how
complete texts work. Here again there are some crucial differences with film
Repetition and Novelty.
If you remember, film as a medium tends to be based around
novelty- every film is considered unique and begins by introducing new
characters and situations to us. Repetition is used in order to make all this
potentially confusing novelty comprehensible to us. Television too mixes
repetition and novelty but it does it the opposite way round. A typical
television show is made up first and foremost of repetition- characters that we
have seen before in familiar locations and recognisable situations. Think of a
typical sit-com like Only Fools and Horses. Week after week we see Del and
Rodney walk around the same recognisable sets that we probably feel we know as
well as many real places and their behaviour follows a pattern- Del will have
some scheme, Rodney at first resists but then gets hooked in and it all goes
disastrously wrong. Think of a non-fiction programme like the news- each episode
starts with a number of serious stories followed by a lighter human interest
one, the sport and then the weather- the same characters- Trevor MacDonald, or
Tony Blair appear day after day. In both cases short segments are linked
together to form a narrative that is basically recognisably familiar.
Critics of television will often point to this repetition
as an example of its inferior status as a medium, but they may be missing the
novelty that does exist within these programmes. The recognisable pattern of the
narrative of Only Fools and Horses relies for our interest on the producers
presenting us with original segments- we know from experience that Del’s plan
will go wrong, but our expectation of enjoyment comes from our belief that the
segment where this happens will be different and surprising (novel).
This repetition of typical situations also adds to the live
feel of TV. Most of us have very few film like events in our lives, but the
repetitive pattern of a television show is reassuringly familiar and seems more
realistic.
If you consider the example of Only Fools and Horses again-
you can see that the idea of the problematic, which we looked at with film, also
fits here. In each episode of a television series there will be a problematic
which forms the basis of the shows narrative and which will be solved at the end
of the episode just as in a film. However, there is a difference because unlike
the one-off film, we will return to the television series the next week with the
mysterious sense that last week’s problem has been completely forgotten,
nobody has learnt from their experiences and there’s a new equally important
problem in their lives. A typical TV series will also have a more serious enigma
which runs through the whole series and which is crucial to the narrative of
every episode- Will Ally McBeal ever find the right man? will Mulder and Scully
discover the truth? will the crew of Star Trek Voyager get home? Will Nialls in
Frasier tell Daphne that he loves
her? By their nature these enigmas are often what keeps us watching the series,
and a large number of episodes will be based around problematics, which seem to
take us closer to their answer and then inevitably disappoint us. There is a
tension here, however. There is a limit to how long an audience can remain
interested in an un-resolved problematic and as a result many television series
will make the gamble of answering this enigma in the hope of moving the
audience’s attention on. This rarely succeeds.
Series and Serials.
A show like Only Fools
and Horses where each episode has a self contained narrative and where
the characters generally fail to develop is called a series. The other principal
television form is the serial a long-term narrative that develops over several
episodes and where we are expecting an eventual conclusion. You could say that
the serial is more like a film in its narrative style in that it is based around
the long-term resolution of a single problematic. It is a much rarer form than
the series, but because it is less based around repetition it has higher status
with the critics and audiences. Typically television producers will spend more
money producing serials and will market them more extensively and with a greater
sense of importance although this is partly because their novelty means they
need to be brought to our attention more. It is because of this difficulty in
selling them to us that serials are tending to disappear from the schedules.
Another problem with keeping and attracting audiences for serials is that if
they miss a crucial episode, they may not feel able to return. To solve this
problem, episodes will often start with a re-cap of past events.
The gradual disappearance of serials from our screens is
only one example of the possible massive changes that may be just around the
corner in the future of television. Some people have argued that digital TV and
the possibility that it offers of even more channel hopping would lead
television to even more segmentation although an opposite argument might be that
multiple channels will mean that some broadcasters will attempt to attract a
niche audience for specialist shows and then, confident of the loyalty and
attention of their audience will be able to produce television that is more
extended and less segmented. Another recent development in America which we will
be getting in the next few years is computer style hard disks which replace
video recorders and which allow users to record an entire week’s television
and then watch what they want when they can concentrate on it properly. Again
this might go against the need for segmentation.
However, any attempts to guess the future should be treated
with caution. A few years ago it was argued that video recorders would
completely change viewing habits so that no one would ever have to watch
anything simply because it was the only thing on. In fact, despite the fact that
video recorders have sold very well, figures suggest that very few of us
actually use them. Only 4% of viewing time is spent watching video, the majority
of video recordings made are never watched and 60% of video users tape no more
than one programme a week.
We hope this booklet has pointed out not only the ways
that narrative are structured but also more importantly the ways this
structuring produces ideology. All of the different theories I have covered in
some way involve the creators of the film simplifying things to communicate a
story to us in the audience. This simplifying process will often make the
ideology of the film easy to find if you go looking for it. However, there are
many traps to stop us from spotting what is going on. The most important one
lies in the nature of film itself as a medium. When you read a novel, another
way of receiving a narrative, it is quite obvious that someone is telling you a
story- you can see their words on the page. In film, on the other hand, we can
often forget that there is an organising power behind what we see in front of
our eyes, someone pushing us to be interested in this character and not care for
that one, someone telling us what to look at and what to ignore. A successful
film will hide its narrative so that it will look as if events are just
unfolding naturally in front of our eyes. With any luck, with the ideas in this
booklet, you will be able to see through this mask.
| Steve Baker | |
| Steve Baker |  |
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