This weeks reading was all about how you tell a story. Filmmakers have so many choices when deciding how they will construct the plot. Because unlike audiences, filmmakers build the plot from the story as opposed to the story from the plot. The story can be defined as “the chain of events in chronological order.” The plot however is what we see on screen. The narrative is driven by cause and effect which means that one event triggers a number of subsequent events which becomes the narrative.

When making a film, one must decide how they will present the film? Who’s point of view will the narrative be presented from? Will they present the plot from one persons view or two? Or many even a group of people, and all these decisions hugely influence how the audience receives the film. Additionally, these decisions also influence which character audiences relate to and sympathize with. For example, had Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State been presented from another characters point of view and not Robert Clayon Dean’s perspective, the audience’s experience of the film would have been very different. Perhaps if the film was presented from the point of view of Thomas Brian Reynolds the audience may have wanted him to get away with the murder. instead of being seen as a vilan Reynold may have been seen in a different light. Thus by showing the film from his perspective may have provided the audience with further information about why he arranged the murder, and therefore audiences may have been more sympathetic towards him. Therefore filmmakers have an enormous amount of decides to make regarding narrative.