Week 3’s Practical constituted a discussion regarding the role of narration on screen, and in moments of its lack thereof, how narrative is portrayed. Each member of the class brought forward a cinematic sequence without narration, ranging from detective forensic scenes from The Wire to short animations about first love – In A Heartbeat. Usually having a duration time of about 8 minutes, the class dissected each sequence after watching and discussed not only how the scene’s narrative was demonstrated but the overall tonality, character and world was portrayed.

One of the most common things I saw whilst this exercise, that in commercial texts, usually no talking scenes are during a montage sequence. Whether this be transitional (make over scene), reminiscent (nostalgia over a character’s past), or inquisitive (La La Land’s ending scene), the montage sequence was used to portray elements of the film in a fast-forward, summarised motion. Paired usually with a non-diegetic score, the accompanied piece of music more often then not used lyrics to expose the interiority of a character’s, or their environments, feelings and happenings.

On the contrary to this visual and musical ‘swaying’ of emotion was texts like Elephant, and Suspiria, which used only diegetic sound in their sequences to enforce the reality and ‘thriller’ aspect of their thriller/horror genre. Similarly, 12 Years A Slave also only used diegetic sound to communicate the ‘realness’ of its situation. Using instead visual motifs made through cuts to denote perspective, social hierarchy and the passing of time.