Narrative and story telling has been taught throughout all stages of education from kindergarten through to tertiary. Back home in Singapore, we would be taught how to write English composition essays, and it could be based on a personal account or just made up on the spot. This week’s readings however, goes in depth from both viewer and filmmaker’s point of view on how various narrative techniques can deliver the same story, but in a different experience, or in other words, a different plot.

It is common for one to mix up the definition of plot and story to be the same thing, however, Boredwell and Thompson goes on to explain the fine line between the two words. From the reading, I gathered that there can be different ways to present a story. Quoting the Alfred Hitchcock example that Boredwell and Thompson used in the reading about the bomb under the table and how you could let the viewer know that there is a bomb that is under the table or just wait for it to go off and bring out the element of surprise to the viewers. That is one of the many techniques a filmmaker may use to deliver the same outcome but would cause a different reaction from the viewer. The technique used here to let the viewers know about bomb going off is known as unrestricted narration, contrary to that would be restricted narration where, like the characters in the scene, the audience are unaware of the bomb ticking. What drives the story would be a strong plot and what makes a strong plot is the decisions that the filmmaker made during pre-production, production, and post-production.

An Australian film was screened this week, Mystery Road. To my memory, I think this was the first Australian film I’ve watched to date, and I must say it was rather laid back and paced at a slower tempo. Which is kind of ironic as this film is a murder mystery story, and usually films or even TV series that takes on that genre would have a generally fast pace, fast cutting and some action scenes happening. However, there were still some similarities to draw from Mystery Road, which is the the filmmaker keeping the depth of story information objective. As mentioned in the reading by Boredwell and Thompson, film narration manipulates not just the range of knowledge, but the depth of knowledge as well, and this can be split into 2, objective or subjective. Objective is where we are confined only to whatever that is being conveyed from the character’s action or interaction with other characters. This is used to withhold information from the viewer’s and to keep the viewers curious on how the investigation is going to be carried out and find out who might be the culprit. The other end of the spectrum would be subjective where the filmmaker allows the viewers to hear the internal voice of a character, an internal monologue, or to see the inner images, like a flashback. Depending on how the filmmaker wants to convey a certain message, the filmmaker have to make a decision whether to go subjective or objective, restricted or unrestricted.