Reading Week 3 – Bordwell and Thompson – Narrative

Week 3 – Narrative Construction – Bordwell and Thompson

The Bordwell and Thompson reading goes over a number of key points outlining narrative, plot and story which includes aspects such as cause and effect.

Narrative – Narrative can be considered as a chain of events in cause and effect relationship occurring in space and time. Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, for instance experiences a chain of events that are all a result of her actions that guide her journey through space and time in her Wonderland.

Plot – The plot refers to everything that is audibly and visually present in the film which can include things such as credits and a films score which can be seen by the viewer but are not believed to be present to the characters in their world.

Story – The story refers to the world of the film and everything that is in it. We acknowledge that the music in the background is not heard by the characters directly. All the people, buildings, vehicles and objects, may be in and out of the shot however they are considered diegetic as they are considered to be apart of the world in the film.

Cause and Effect – Cause and effect is the driving force behind narratives and is most present in the characters and how they react and trigger events in the narrative. Characters in most cases are human and take on physical, visual beings that have traits and personalities that make up that character. One of my favourite movies ‘Stand By Me’ follows the story of 4 boys who go on an adventure and in the process grow as characters. There is one scene in particular where Gordie reacts angrily to Chris who begins telling Gordie about how he should go on to study writing. Gordie reacts to this quite angrily and in turn sparks a narrative cue that does reoccur during the rest of the film.

Experimental Films – Experimental films tend to challenge the general narrative structure, and tend to focus on the visual and audible aspects of the film as opposed to whether it’s characters move forward spatially and temporally through story and cause and effect. From what i have seen of the K-films, it seems as though it will be focusing on this type of film with elements of narrative. When watching the K-films I was drawn into the visual and audible elements and how they were laid out in relation to each other which i guess could be considered a bit of both in terms of experimental and narrative, either way I am interested to see how it pans out.