Casting my mind back to week 7 (what is it with these long weekends making me slack??) and to our lectorial that week – which covered non-narrative media, with a brief chat on collaboration.

According to Bordwell & Thompson, non-narrative media can be split into linear, non-linear, and multi-linear. In the case of linear non-narratives, there are four definable forms – Abstract/Experimental, Rhetorical, Categorical and Associational.

Non-linear non-narrative films take on a more open structure – which is how documentaries could be argued to be non-narrative. Although – some documentaries seem to take on a narrative format.

Multi-linears are probably the most interesting – with various branching of different non-narratives. In the lectorial we were presented with an online interactive story to demonstrate this idea. As a huge fan of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books as a kid, these multi-linear ideas of interactive media has really intrigued me.

We then had a short viewing of the teaser for the film ‘I Love Your Work’. Never before had I been in a lecture where we actively viewed that sort of material (there was this one time the guy in front of me got bored during an accounting lecture and decided to switch on pornography, but that’s a different story). But it seemed like a really interesting way to structure a documentary – and really raw as well.

We then went on to have a brief discussion about collaboration, given our upcoming group projects. I remember at the time feeling a little bit apprehensive about the approaching tasks as I have had negative experiences in past – yet as I will come to learn in the workshop the group I’m in is one I’m pretty happy with, even if the topic isn’t really of great interest to me.