Narrative Theories

• Bordwell and Thompson (1980) state that narrative is defined as “a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship occurring in time”. American screenwriter, Syd Field suggests a good film must, in the first ten minutes, engage the target audience whilst introducing the genre and narrative.  In our group, we have conformed to this theory in just a small fraction of this time to create a successful sixty second teaser trailer using restricted narration to force enigmas and offer minimal information about the urban teen drama film through mise-en-scene such as drugs and cigarettes but enough to engage our target audience. By using subjective character identification we have given the audience a view into the main characters life from the outside – creating further enigma towards the cause of her being alone.  

•  Vladimir Propp’ Theory of Narrative suggests the narrative “spheres of action” apply to most films. This theory introduces seven character types; hero, villain, donor, helper, princess, dispatcher and false hero. From out teaser trailer, the audience can assume the main character, Rose, plays the part of the princess and the villain due to her underlying battles with depression and isolation highlighted in the titles.  From these titles the audience can tell Rose is her own villain as she is a victim of her own self-destructive mind and chooses to take harmful drugs seen in shots of her injecting heroin- this also makes her the princess. As our film is a social realist film, Rose being two opposite character types conforms to real life situations where realistically, there is not always a hero character and there is not always a happy ending which we have highlighted in our trailer by closing the trailer with an enigmatic shot of Rose wearing old, dirty clothes outside.

• Aristotle studied the narrative of plays and found that the narrative should be created within a ‘unity of time’. With the entire plot based in the same location in real time with all action leading towards a conclusion. Our trailer subverts this idea as it shows a number of different locations and times without conclusion. Continuous montage of footage shows jump cuts between different locations including a flashback and unresolved issues including homelessness.
• Todorov presented a theory of narrative that suggests five stages of narrative in mainstream films; equilibrium, disruption, recognition, repaid and new equilibrium. Our film however subverts this idea as the trailer opens with the upmost point of disequilibrium with close up shots of cooking and injecting heroin as well as ending the trailer with a fast mid shot of Rose sitting alone outside, homeless.  This creates further enigma as the first stage or equilibrium and how disruption occurred are not clear.

• Allan Cameron’s Modular Narrative’s “articulate a sense of time as divisible and subject to manipulation”. Of the four types of modular narrative; anachronic, forking paths, episodic and split screens – our trailer has an anachronic narrative, as there is no clear dominance between and of the narrative threads. Our character has physical flashbacks near the end of the trailer, which show her life before she turned to drugs. This flashback cements the narrative to show calm and happiness before she became an adult. The flashbacks are also the only time you see Rose with other people, which highlights her isolation in real time.
• Levi-Strauss’ Binary Oppositions theory states that narrative tension is based on opposition or conflict. Our trailer conforms to this theory as Rose is in conflict with herself. Her drug and alcohol abuse shown in he trailer along with evidence of depression shows her inner turmoil and conflict with her own mind and habits. There is also a transition and clear opposition between her current situation and her past where she was much happier shown through mid shots of her laughing with friends in comparison to mid shots of her in real time alone and isolated with nobody around her.