Week one is over and although I am now completely exhausted, I am excited to see the direction all my new classes take me this semester.
This week looking at Plot, I teamed up to adjust and recreate the story of Little Red riding hood. My group began by fleshing out how we wanted the story which ‘consists of all the events which are to be depicted'(- Copley 2014(2001), 5) to look. We chose to stick to a couple choices consisting of a jail visit between and father and daughter, a Mob boss mystery person switch and ultimately a kidnapping and fight scene. It was interesting to discover how plot works as a way to tie the different events in the story and relate them to each other. Reading the Copley’s definition for Story, Plot and Narrative was fascinating to me as I was able to discover the difference between the three and was introduced to a new way of thinking about narrative. Narrative is not only a book or tale written it can be defined as ‘the showing or telling of events and the mode selected for that to take place”-Copley 2014(2001),5 . Overall this activity was very insightful, as it helped us to break down and picture the differences between these three aspects of a tale/movie/novel etc.
Another group activity that really stood out to me was the photos sequence activity. This was an activity that allowed our groups to plan and discuss the ways we could develop a story and convey what we were trying to portray through a series of photographs. I found this activity very engaging as it allowed us to really think about the way media aids our ability to show and not tell a story. To plan our photographs we worked through a story spine template that focussed on an eight part story telling process that focussed on capturing how the phrases “Once upon a time…, And every day…, Until one day…, And because of that x 3…, Until finally…, and ever since then…”.
Throughout the activity my team spent a fair amount of time on planning. Originally we thought this would be a good idea and would help us to plan how we wanted each photograph to look, we soon discovered that this wasn’t the smartest choice as we found throughout the creation process we had much less time than expected to adjust the shots when original ideas didn’t work out.
Overall, I look forward to applying these new ideas and techniques to my future story telling.
Cobley, Paul. (2014). Narrative. London and New York: Routledge.