Tagged: Week 8

A Most Excellent Adventure

When we were exploring narrative the other day an interesting idea was brought up. It was the idea that there is no original story anymore. Everything these days is either a sequel, prequel, adaptation or reboot of someone else’s ideas and Hollywood has been criticized again and again for no longer being the place for new stories to arise. But when you analyse it, it is very difficult to create a story that isn’t similar to something out there already in the world. The classic heroes journey was discussed, and can be seen emulated in about almost every heroic tale. From Harry Potter to Rocky, it is one of the most recognized story-line structures in history.

Heros-Journey

This just falls under the patterns and multiple representations stories go through in history. It feeds into the 7 basic plots described by Christopher Booker.

  • Overcoming the Monster
  • Rags to Riches
  • The Quest
  • Voyage and Return
  • Comedy
  • Tragedy
  • Rebirth

I just think it means that there is now more added pressure in creating more incredible content and that it is okay to recycle ideas every now and then. Not everything has to be completely different from the past, it just has to stem from a place where you can express your individual ideas and how you execute them.

Everything Is Awesome

everything is story, story is everything

This week we went over what warrants something as a narrative. We loosely defined narrative as any kind of retelling of a sequence of events with logical ordered sequences, but is that really the only way to form a narrative. There is obviously the factor of causality ,cause and effect, within narratives but can’t a story exist as a expression and vague ideas rather than a clear outlines plot? Obviously a story cannot exist without certain key aspects. For a story to exist there needs to be characters, actions and events caused by those actions: logical progression from one event to the next. However it could be argued that some narratives don’t need all of these to create a narrative.

Like this short film, not all stories need to be clear cut and defined by the mainstream ideals of narrative. A story can exist through many different things. In class we had to find reasons of how “We Have Decided Not To Die” was or was not a narrative.

Jeremy found narrative aspects in:

  • The title cards creating a linear story
  • The conclusion cross-cutting between the three characters connecting their stories
  • People as central figures helps audience connect to them
  • How they arrived to their situations (backstory)
  • Movement could indicate pain and struggle, and narrative can stem from character suffering
  • Thematic connection, patterns of representation
  • Different places create a journey
  • Parallel events (parallel editing)
  • Title gives film causality and character motivation

I explored the non-narrative aspects that could be possible including:

  • There was no obvious causality
  • No clear character development
  • No clear diegetic plotline
  • No clear linear events tying scenes together
  • That the graphic matches were to make art, not story
  • Lack of cohesion
  • Non representation (something not explicitly said can mean it is not a narrative element)
  • Lack of conclusion/sense of closure
  • No character motivation or interaction
  • People were seen as props not characters

This exercise was difficult for me because I tend to not think to abstractly about film’s and products, but after the lesson I think I have a better grasp on what dictates a narrative and what people can interpret from moving image. Narrative could be subjective, and it is up to the viewer to decide whether to imply story to something or just to observe it as art.

 

Ottakaji

This week we were given our final project to complete for Media 1, and it was something. I’m not sure if I’m the only on that walked away bewildered at the amount of content and alack of experience to understand what we had to accomplish. I know what we have to include, but my group mates (Annie & Sammy) have not really had much planning yet as to what we are going to do as the final product. It’s going to be a slow start I think, but I’m excited to learn new things in the process.