Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, 2013.
Having read this before, I decided to briefly address the points made by Adrian that were:
– Define what a narrative actually is, and;
– Think about what experimental practices can teach us to better see the role of multi linearity, both in general and for also specifically for our Korsakow films.
As this was quite a dense thing to read, I’ve really tried to condense my summary and also the responses to the questions raised by Adrian.
Bordwell and Thompson define a narrative as ‘a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space’. This simple definition is then expanded on when Bordwell and Thompson state that a narrative begins with a particular event, to which the characters and environment of the narrative respond and the cause-effect relation of the narrative begins to take place.
According to this reading and based on my own understanding:
– an event is an occurrence that effects the characters in a narrative in a profound way
– a cause-effect relationship with when one event causes a response, which causes another event and so on, so forth
– time is the progression of the narrative, whether it is chronological or not
– space is the world of the film, specifically the places in which the narrative unfolds
I think that this definition is perfectly legitimate for the purposes of our understanding in Integrated Media. Whilst Bordwell and Thompson continue in great depth to explain the notion of narrative, it makes no sense at this point for me to keept babbling about what a narrative essentially is, as it is put so eloquently by Bordwell and Thompson.
In terms of experimental practice in narrative, Bordwell and Thompson define experimental films as ‘those that are made with the intention of challenging the traditional idea of what a film is, what it shows and how it shows it’. Experimental films are simply created in a non-conformist manner and are seen by many as the testing grounds in which many filmmakers explore their own ideas about what is possible in the medium of film. I feel as though this definition provides an adequate coverage of experimental film as a whole and about what we’ll be doing this semester with our Korsakow films.
In terms of the ‘type’ of experimental film we’ll be making, I feel as though our films will best fit into the associational category, whereby the material we’re creating is truly trying to have meaning and communicate something, rather than be a nonsensical abstract film. I think it is important for a our interactive documentaries to have meaning, to capture the imagination of our ‘readers’ and to provoke thought or carry some kind of message. Whether or not this is achieved will depend mostly on the type of audience and how deeply they think upon the links that we will attempt to create between our Korsakow films.
In terms of multi linearity in our films. I feel as though Korsakow films haveto be non-linear because of the fact that the audience is free to interact with them and decide how they want to watch them. This means that several interpretations will be possible and that we actually have very little control over how they’re read – we only determine the content and how it’s displayed. Not how it’s ordered, not how it’s viewed.
