| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

module_3

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 10 months ago

Transmedia Story Creation

Module 3: Visual Narrative, Part 1 + Psychology of Narrative

 

By Damon Regan and Matthew Walsh

 


Module Outline

 

 


Associated Readings

 

  •  Narrative and Media (Fulton et al., 2005) Chs. 4-5
  • The Narrative Construction of Reality (Bruner, 1991) 

 


Background

 

Narrative and Media 

 

In Narrative and Media, Dr. Julian Murphet examines the world of film in a narrative form. According to Murphet, "film and literature cannot be considered independently of each other" (University). Murphet provides a look into the world of film as a producer of narrative. He opens chapter four with two common film terms montage and mise en scene. The book's glossary contains a decent explanation for both terms (p.310). Another term, proto-narrative is also given. A proto-narrative is not yet a flowing narrative, however, it will become one when combined with other elements (p. 48-49). The montage is specifically useful in editing the narrative and story by splicing images together to create the story.
 
Aristotle developed narrative unities: unity of place, time and action; these assume that time and space are universal, continuous, and coherent; such assumptions are not part of all narrative frameworks. (Theme: Narrative Theory and Discourse Analysis online) Murphet continues with Lumière's film to point out how it is not a narrative. As the action of the film happens, no narration or development of plot happens as the train comes into the station. This scene is a fixed camera angle shooting an everyday occurrence with no actions out of the ordinary that would demand an explanation of the event.
 He spends most of chapter four pointing out how the story and plot are linked in three styles (classical, modernist and postmodernist) of narration, referencing one film in each style.
 
Classical narration - This is where good versus evil resides. Murphet describes the classical narrative as "a given state of affairs is interrupted by some 'cut' in the real; readjustments and losses occur, but finally a new, improved state of affairs emerges from the central character's wrestling with that 'cut' in things" (p. 55). Murphet uses the term 'cut' to symbolize a villain or a natural disaster, anything that can add conflict to the objective of the main character. Classical narratives usually focus on one main character and the objective. Character's thoughts and points of view only reflect the needs of the main character and usually do not stray from the plot. Classical narration has become so common for a late 20th film go-er that Murphet believes the "dynamics that have become all but invisible to us during a century of familiarisation and habituation" (p. 55).  The film Birth of a Nation is used as the example of classical narration
 
Modernist narration - A unique and varying breakdown of the organization of film's plot storytelling and of the story's content. Modernist narratives looked at complex situations and stories that dealt with social and political causes. Modernist filmmaking did not rely on one character's point of view, many characters' needs and thoughts were focused on. The modernist filmmaking genre could also include the neorealist style that was fluent in Italy during the 1950s and 60s. Citizen Kane is revered in the Murphet's modernist narrative section because of Welles' ability to manipulate the story through the editing. Welles combines two stories into the one film, the week long investigation and the seventy-five year life of Charles Kane. This film was shot and edited together in a new alternate way, which helped Welles redefine American filmmaking.
 
Postmodern narration - Murphet continues his narrative reign with the postmodernist narrative. This proposes the problem of "what is a postmodernist narrative?" Murphet's answer lies within his explanation of the film Memento. The film still reigns within the classical narration of who is the character and what does he need, but it strays in how the film progresses. The breakdown of the plot, instead of laying in ABC order, director and writer Christopher Nolan decides to go with ZXY, until the viewer (and main character) get to A. Each scene shows a segment of the previous scene, however, it is revealed in the reverse order.
 
Murphet concludes in chapter four that the plot of the films is where the narrative choices (edits) are made and the story is what allows the plot to unfold (p. 59). His three film choices provide a base for his claim that plot is the story. The characters and story elements would not be entertaining or meaningful with a plot to make the information have a purpose.
 
Chapter five reveals that film is a narrative that works through time placing sequences together moving from the beginning to the end. Murphet distinguishes between the film’s story, plot and screen times.
 
Story time – This is the period of time that deals with all incidents in or mentioned within the film.
 
Plot time – It is shorter than story time and deals only with the length of the actions. Plot time can be out of order, rapidly fast forward through minutes or years or even slow down to a crawling speed. Murphet uses the most quoted reference to explain how plot time works, the plot’s time runs with the detective following the clues to solve the crime. He states the crime and investigation are part of the story time, but only the investigation is covered in plot time.
 
Screen time – This is the amount of time the story is shown on a projected surface. Films like A League of Their Own have a story time of about fifty years, a plot time of a 1943 baseball season, and ending with a screen time of just over two hours.

 

Murphet continues his discussion of speeds by exploring how films will use multiple speeds within the film to convey the story and imagery. Slow-motion, accelerated and freeze frames are three very common film strategies to emphasize the story. Godfrey Reggio’s film Powaqqatsi is a film that is discussed for Reggio’s use of varying speeds in the film. A sample of this film is included in the Additional Resources section.
 
Duration – The pace and importance of events is gauged by controlling the speed and length of the narrative.
 
Isochronic – This term has been used to define when three times are all equal to each other. Gerald Genette, a French theorist uses this term in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, back in 1972.
 
Anisochronic – Almost every film is considered anisochronic because its ability to manipulate the plot and story time’s events. If we were to watch a detective film with all three times synced together, it would be very long and boring, especially when the detective was not working the particular story.
 
Prolepse – “Any narrative manoeuvre that consists of narrating or evoking in advance an event that will take place later” (p.69).
 
Analepse – This is when there is a violation to the temporal order of the story, an example would be a flashback to an earlier time before the current action. Murphet points out many uses of the flashback, including recalling what may have been forgotten in a long narrative (p. 70-71).
 
Frequency – The repetition of acts within the narrative to allow different perspectives on the act and how it affects the characters and plot. It also controls how the information is given to the audience (p. 72).
 
 

Narrative Construction of Reality

 

In The Narrative Construction of Reality article, Jerome Bruner examined how narrative operates as an instrument of mind in the construction of reality.  He spent quite a bit of time introducing, evaluating, and integrating various theories of knowledge to describe reality and our knowledge of it.  Empiricism and rationalism were the two major theories with which he began.

 

  • Empiricism - The philisophical doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience.
  • Rationalism - The philisophical doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience.

 

Bruner stated that both of these views "gave accounts of mental development as proceeding in some more or less linear and uniform fashion."  He said that modern critics argue that the growth of knowldge of reality is neither unilinear nor across the board.  Rather, knowledge and skill are domain specific and uneven in their accretion.

 

Bruner briefly introduced several ideas with this context of domains established and the idea that "knowledge is never 'point-of-viewless'" in our minds. Integrating Howard_Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and Vygotsky's Cultural-historical psychology, Bruner concluded that domains are "not organized by logical principals or associative connections, particularly those that have to do with man's knoweldge of himself, his social world, his culture."  Rather, he argued that such domains are constructed by narrative, so-called narrative realities, according to narrative principals.  He offered 10 such principles or features of narrative:

 

1.  Narrative diachronicity - Diachronicity deals with phenomena (as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of time.  "Narrative comprises an ensemble of ways of constructing and representing the sequential, diachronic order of human events, of which the sequencing of clauses in spoken or written 'stories' is only one device" (p. 6).

 

2.  Particularity - That which is unique in an otherwise generic story.

 

3.  Intentional state entailment - Characters are set in motion with reasons for doing things.  If they actual do those things is another matter.

 

4.  Hermeneutic composability - Hermeneutics refers to the study of the methodological principles of interpretation.  "Great storytellers have the artifices of narrative reality construction so well mastered that their telling preempts momentarily the possibility of any but a single interpretation - however bizarre it may be" (p. 9).

 

5.  Canonicity and breach - "a tale must be about how an implicit canonical script has been breached, violated, or deviated from" (p. 11).

 

6.  Referentiality - "Narrative 'truth' is judged by its verisimilitude rather than its verifiability" (p. 13).  Verisimilitude means the appearance of truth.

 

7.  Genericness - "Genres seem to provide both writer and reader with commodious and convential 'models' for limiting the hermeneutic task of making sense of human happenings -- ones we narrate to ourselves as well as ones we hear others tell" (p. 14).

 

8.  Normativeness - of or pertaining to a norm, especially, an assumed norm regarded as the standard of correctness in behavior, speech, writing, etc.  "A story pivots on a breach in legitimacy" (p. 15).

 

9.  Context sensitivity and negotiability - We each negotiate the meaning of a story in the context of our background knowledge.

 

10.  Narrative accrual - "narratives do accrue, and, as anthropologists insist, the accruals eventually create something variously called a 'culture' or a 'history' or, more loosely, a 'tradition'" (Bruner, p. 18).

 


Analysis

 

The readings for this week provide enough stimulus for a whole summer's contemplation.  Going back to fundamental theories of knowledge perhaps challenges the way we have seen the world all of our life.  Such fundamental considerations don't happen over night.  From the readings of last week, Aristotle's view that "only scientific discourse was productive of [true] knowledge" resonated with me.  Certainly, rhetoric and poetic forms of discourse have value, but to one raised a "little scientist," the logical positivist's doctrine that no statement could claim knowledge unless it was empirically verifiable reigned supreme.

 

Starting from an empiricists perspective on Bruner's article made the digestion of his thoughts quite difficult.  However, he focused on culture and the social world, which to the "little scientist" is a mystery that the human genome project or the mapping of a brain will likely not reveal.  If one accepts his deconstruction of reality into domains, then concentrating on those related to the social world are worthwhile.  I'd like to share a quick story.

 

I offered to watch my friend's lab this weekend while he was out of town.  I have a golden retriever and a cocker spaniel.  They are social dogs who love the dog park.  They wouldn't mind having a friend visit for the weekend.  Well, of course they would.  I'm sure an objective behaviorist could "explain" what was going on inside all three dogs minds as their behaviors were in flux (Lord knows I read whatever the humane society had to offer).  But, what was really going inside these dogs' heads is a mystery -- my dogs are in some way unique and this situation is unique.  If they could only write their individual narratives about this experience, we might have some "explanation" of reality.  It might not be as cut and dry as the animal behaviorist might tell me and therefore seem objectively true, but even the little scientist knows that information should be corroborated.  Why should I rely on a single interpretation of reality?

 

In narrative and media, Murhpet explained what we all know, which is that "film is compellingly 'realistic'" (p. 48).  Reality is the object of the battle for how to use the medium of film, just like the battle over the use of discourse recounted by Walter Fisher.  Murphet explained the human and post-human perspectives and asked how Hollywood transformed a machinic and technical point of view into a human and narrative one?  Murphet offered this answer: "in order to generate profits the medium conformed to existing ideas about what 'entertainment' and storytelling were" (p. 52).  But, I don't think we just wanted the medium to conform to our "existing ideas" as if we didn't want anything new.  Film has the ability to make clear a "domain" of our world that can only be understood through social interaction -- through understanding someone else's perspective.  Unlike a microscope, film can do that.

 

Single interpretations are how many narratives are formed and told. We like to believe that we are capable and should see multiple “versions” to obtain the message. Contrary to belief, this is not the truth. Sometimes we get the multiple perspective approach, the film Hero does this. We see the battle and action points told through all parties involved. This allows our brain to fill in the gaps and see who is telling the more “accurate” version of the story. Divorces seem to play in with the multiple interpretations of reality – his/hers and the truth. However, we are still forced to create a single interpretation to what the reality of the narrative is. We cannot have all sides be in agreement.

 

Murphet likes to the take his philosophical and theoretical approach to film’s narrative by looking at the process of the film. This is a common approach used by many film theorists including Rudolf Arnheim and Sergei Eisenstein. Many aspects of Murphet’s interpretations of “edit” and utilization of it, does make for an interesting approach to the film narrative; however, his segment on postmodernism is lacking details and does not clearly delve into what makes this narrative. The best way for the breakdown would have been to state that postmodernism narratives break the mold of the traditional framework, unfortunately he describes modernism in a similar fashion. Memento was an interestingly composed film telling the story backwards, however, how is that postmodernism? Citizen Kane is referred as being modernism, and that film starts at the end and then also works backwards…how then is Memento that different?

 

The amazing experience of film as a narrative is its ability to not only tell but truly show the audience/reader the experience. Unfortunately, we draw back to one person’s interpretations when the film is based upon a previously created source, such as an Anne Rice novel…then again, we were restricted to that when we first sat down in the comfy chair reading the delectable novel to begin with. Do I disagree with my partner’s hopes for relying on more than one interpretation, not entirely…but then again, this is one person’s interpretation of another person’s readings.

 


Additional Resources

 

Here are some clips from films that were referenced within the readings, or chosen because of their relation to the materials. The first clip is from the film The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing and is a documentary specifically designed to show how the story, plot and characters are created and manipulated through the power of editing.

 

YouTube plugin error

(from the film: The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (2004), dir. Wendy Apple)

YouTube plugin error

(from the film: Powqqatsi (1988), dir. Godfrey Reggio)

YouTube plugin error

(from the film: Man With A Movie Camera (1929), dir. Dziga Vertov)

YouTube plugin error

(from the film: The Battleship Potemkin (1925), dir. Sergei Eisenstein)

 


References

 

Agadzhanova, N., Aseyev, N., Eisenstein, & S., Tretyakov (Writer), & S. Eisenstein (Director) (1925). Battleship Potemkin. Russia.

 

Buner, J. (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. University of Chicago

 

Harris, M. J. (Writer), & W. Apple (Director) (2004). The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing. USA: Starz Entertainment.

 

Murphet, J. (2005). Stories and plots. In H. Fulton, R. Huisman, J. Murphy & A. Dunn (Eds.), Narrative and Media (pp. 47-59). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Murphet, J. (2005). Narrative time. In H. Fulton, R. Huisman, J. Murphy & A. Dunn (Eds.), Narrative and Media (pp. 60-72). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Murphet, J. (unknown). University of Sydney. http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/english/staff/profiles/murphet_j.shtml. Accessed May 31, 2007.

 

Reggio, G., & Richards, K. (Writer), & G. Reggio (Director) (1998). Powaqqastsi. USA: MGM.

 

Unknown. Theme: Narrative Theory and Discourse Analysis http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/time/research/narrative.html. accessed May 31, 2007

 

Wilson, K., Candaele, K., Ganz, L., & Mandell, B. (Writer) & P. Marshall (Director) (1992). A League Of Their Own. USA: Columbia Pictures.

 


[Back to the Course Wiki]

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.