Let’s be honest, everyone’s seen a pretty shit film. I watched Grown-Ups 2 once and it probably goes down as the worst I have seen. I have some respect for Adam Sandler, his SNL days are some quality half-baked viewing. But Grown-Ups 2 defied all logic of filmmaking and still made $247 million in Box Office revenue. I’m not here to rag on about Grown-Ups though; it’s just an example of a shocking narrative, or lack thereof.
Dan’s summary of Narrative was pretty much what I’ve been taught before, and almost completely contradicts Grown-Ups… All the key elements of Narrative were there; character development, plot and resolution. But I haven’t ever visualised a story as a graph with peaks and troughs relating to emotion. I found this mapping of emotions an effective way to summarise key events relating to the protagonist.
It was when we were watching “We Have Decided Not to Die” though, that this mapping process became difficult. As it is, WHDNTD is a possible example of a film with no narrative. This is very arguable though. The soundtrack of this film reminds me of a lot of house music, where an emotional atmosphere is constructed to provide a form of narrative. Just like in WHDNTD, the similar elements of the soundtrack tie each evident section together to form parts of a bigger picture. On this basis, I felt it possible to construct a visual map of the plot points.
Twisting Narrative and recreating old stories captured my attention. The unexpected nature of ‘Red Hot Riding Hood’ was great because our understanding of the story was challenged. This is what I enjoy about film and Narrative; being taken by surprise, and I took this as the main point of the seminar.
– ‘We Have Decided Not to Die’ and ‘Hot Red Riding Hood’ can be viewed below.
Tex Avery – MGM 1943-05-08 – Red Hot Riding Hood by barayluis
– Gabe