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Transmedia Story Creation
Module 4: Visual Narrative, Part 2 + Folk Tales, Part 1

 

By Michelle Head and Chien-Huei Wetherington

 


Module Outline

 

 


Associated Readings

 

  • Narrative and Media (Fulton et al., 2005) Chs. 6-7  
  • Breaking the Magic Spell (Zipes, 1979) Ch. 1  

 


Background

 

Narrative and Media

 

Dr. Julian Murphet discussed the imperative differences between language-based and film-based platforms in narrative. Murphet considers narrative as a higher-order narrator, a voice. In a novel, the voice ultimately depicts the relationships between characters, the minute detail of the environment, and the dramatic events of the story. In a film, the voice is carried out through a collaboration of the director, the scriptwriter, the cinema photographer, the set designer, etc.
 
We usually don’t recognize the narrator’s voice in commercial cinema. The commercial film industry historically has a formula for cinema productions, a typical commercial movie will abide by the following rules:
  • Continuity editing
  • Simple plots with apparent “good” guys and “bad” guys
  • Keep the camera itself as invisible as possible
  • Avoid any obvious intensions of stylization
  • Pretense to objectivity and anonymity of voice 
 
However, Hollywood has evolved to humanize the narrator by displaying the internal consciousness of an author’s written text and add value assessment and compassion to the storytelling.
 
The narrative voice can be studied in four coordinates: person, temporal location, diegetic location, and narrative presence. The following table summarizes the coordinates in chapter 6.

 

Table 1
Narrative Voice Coordinates

Narrative Voice Coordinates
 
Novel/Language-based Genre
Film
Person
·      First person
·      Second person
·      Third person - narrative consciousness can be written to imply the first person point of view
·      First and third person
·      Second person - very rarely used
Temporal Location
·      Subsequent - past tense, most typical
·      Prior - predictive, future-tense
·      Simultaneous - present-tense
·      Interpolated - present-tense action with inserted past-tense
·      Real time - most typical
·      Prior - rarely used in the past, more popular in contemporary narratives, i.e. The Matrix
Diegetic
Location
·      Internal - homodiegetic narrator
·      External – extradiegetic narrator, outside of the world of the text
·      Internal - gain attention instantly
·      External – hear the voice when narrator is not speaking
Narrative Presence
Rimmon-Kenan’s six-stage growth of narrative presence (Rimmon-Kenan 1983)
1.    Description of settings
2.    Identification of characters
3.    Temporal summaries
4.    Definition of character
5.    Reports of what characters did not think or say
6.    Commentary – interpretation, judgment, generalisation
·      Stages 1 and 2 - automatically
·      Stage 3 – can be accomplished by manipulations of narrative time
·      Stages 4 - 6 - homodiegetic narration
·      Subjectification narration - music, lighting, and color palette

 

In between the textual narrator (an estate of the text) and the textual author (the actual person(s) who wrote the text), the Implied author is studied by theorists. To study an implied author such as the late director, Akira Kurosawa, whose consistent distinctive narrating style can be easily recognized across different genres and time is known as auteur theory. Among many films that speak the form of homodiegetic narrative voice, many directors use cinema as an authorial tool and try to carry out their metadiegetic narrative voice as well.

 

Point of View

In chapter seven, Murphet (2005) discusses the use of cinematic techniques to execute the narrative. The following narratology terms provide insight into this chapter.

 

Scopophilia isgaze-loving’; voyeuristic. Predominately refers to the male gaze often objectifying women.

Focalisation is the perspective from which the narrative is told; not necessarily the narrator. Focalisation can be fixed, multiple, or variable.

Fixed focalisation - stay with one point of view (POV) for entire story

Variable focalisation - focalisation shifts between characters, not necessarily equally

Multiple focalisation - different POV’s narrate the same story events

 

Eye line match is a film technique where the camera pans in on the character, then cuts to an object the character is viewing off screen, demonstratingwhat Murphet calls associative focalisation whichallows the audience to see what the character is viewing.

 

Close-up is a film technique where the camera zooms in filling the screen to show details such as facial expressions, allows us to identify with the characters emotional state.

 

POV shot is a film technique used to capture the character(s) Optical POV or what the character is seeing as if the camera were in the characters head.

 

An Introduction to the History and Ideology of Folk and Fairy Tale

Folk tales and fairy tales are often mistaken for one another, however, they are different.

 

Folk tales are oral forms of narrative. They were told by storytellers of typically low socio-economic, agrarian societies. They date back as far as the Megalithic period.

 

Fairy tales are a written form of narrative began to appear around the 16th century. They were written by aristocracy.

  

Analysis

 

Narrative Voice

Identifying with verbal narrative comes naturally to humans as it is the natural form of thought and communication for us. Film narrative on the other hand is not. Film narrative is mechanical and in itself lacks humanism. But what keeps the audience coming to the theater with eyes glued to the screen? Murphet discusses techniques used when creating film narrative to humanize the mechanical nature of the process and allow us, the audience, to experience the story along with the characters and to hear the voice that the director tries to convey.
 
How does ‘Hollywood’ enable us to see thru the eyes of the main characters in a film narrative? One technique is to take advantage of a psychological predisposition of humans to identify with the main character and project themselves into the story.
 
Directors in the film and television industries occasionally challenge the viewers by employ their narrative voices through manipulated storylines and shots. Films and  TV shows like The Jacket (2005), The Butterfly Effect (2004), The Sixth Sense (1999), Desperate House Wives (2004-2007), Babylon 5 (1994-1998), and Medium (2005-2007), all tried to speak through different genre and diegetic narratives to audience like us. Do we hear their voices? Do we recognize differences in their voices?
 
When we hear a voice, we can recognize the accent, the grammatical construction, the speed, and the tone. All these linguistic characteristics can also be found in the narrative voice. When we see a movie made by Tsui Hark, Federic Fellini, Gurinder Chadha or John Ford we can always hear the director’s accented voice through his/her unique composition of cinematography, the construction of the shots, the flow of the scenes, the rhythm of the cuts, and the pitch of the storyline. The narrative voice has no language boundaries, despite sometimes the necessary little subtitles down at the bottom of the screen, we can always appreciate a well-directed movie.
 
Besides relating the audience to a film using the psychological and hearing senses, there are other techniques that film makers can apply. How often have we either assumed the character of Luke Skywalker or Princess Leah while watching Star Wars? How often have we taken on the characteristics of our film heroes with whom we have identify and idolized for years? Focalisation is another technique used to project an audience into the mind of the character(s). Whether the focalisation is fixed on one character, multiple characters or a variety of characters, the camera is used to focus on and capture the perspectives of those individuals. The audience tends to then identify with that character’s point of view and project themselves into the action, becoming lost in the narrative.
 
Amazingly, by varying the focalisation, the creators of the television show Lost have been affectively able to place the audience in the shoes/minds of various survivors as well as several of “the others”. By doing this they influence our interpretation of the narrative. Those that previously seemed evil now seem to be just as human, just as good as the survivors for whom we have been rooting.
 
‘Hollywood’ is challenged when narrating a story to make sure the characters point of view is projected and not the camera’s point of view. Using such techniques as close-ups allows them to achieve this by zeroing in on the characters face immersing the audience in the emotion demonstrated by the character. For instance, in the movie Home Alone Kevin is reveling in his father’s morning ritual on his first morning home alone. He is crooning to the sounds of Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ into a comb in his parent’s bathroom he decides to apply dad’s aftershave. The audience quickly identifies with Kevin’s mistake as the close-up captures his reaction to the burn of aftershave. (See Addition Recourses, Home Alone (1990, dir. Chris Columbus.) 
  
By using the cold mechanical tools (camera, etc.) to squeeze in close with the camera to capture an emotional response, or vary the focalisation and optical point of view through camera angle. ‘Hollywood’ is able to create a warm humanistic feeling, giving the viewer a character with whom they can identify. Further study of narrative and focalisation can be found in Talib’s (2004) Narrative Theory online paper.
 

Folk and Fairy Tales

Most everyone grew up hearing fairy tales, folk tales; fanciful tales of imaginative places in a far off land. Stories with a prince and a princess (or soon to be princess), a beast and an evil witch, that captured our imagination and inspired us to be like the protagonists of the story; good, beautiful, and kind.
 
But did we ever stop to think what was behind the creation of the tales we love much? Where did they come from (besides Disney)? Were they just imaginative stories meant to entertain that came from a super creative writer sitting in a dark room lit solely by an individual oil lamp, scribbling on a piece of parchment?
 
In actuality they are a result of the struggle between social classes. Folk tales which are an oral form of narrative were told by storytellers of typically low socio-economic, agrarian societies and changed to fit the needs of the community of the time. The folk tales were a form of wish fulfillment and escapism for them during times of extreme repression and exploitation. In a sense, this was their only way of speaking out against the all too common, unfair practices of the dominant social class.
 
Fairy tales, a written form of narrative that came much later, are often mistaken for folk tales. In actuality they are a corruption of the original folk tales. As folk tales began to have an influence that went against the dominant social classes and their practices, the aristocracy appropriated the stories and changed them to legitimize their own standard of living.
 
With the mass mediated form of fairy tales, written text, the stories spread fast and a new literary genre was born. By publishing these stories in written text they were able to control the production and limit the audience as most of the lower socio-economic class could not read. As feudalism declines and capitalism begins its ascension the fairy tales again begin transform to suite the severe ideology of the capitalist class.
 
Today, fairy tales are still a very powerful genre, even with the technological mass produced of books, movies, and merchandising. They may not be spurring any revolts, but they still comment on societal values that the average parent would like their children to adopt. Fairy tales like Shrek teaches children (and adults) that beauty is on the outside. We do not all have to look like Cinderella for good things to happen to us and be loved. Shark Tales teaches that aspiring to a higher level is not just accepted but a good thing. Some of the values taught may have changed to meet the ideology of present day society but that is the evolution of the fairy tale.
 

Table 2

Comparison of Folklore to Literature

Comparison of Folklore to Literature
Folklore
Literature
Oral
Performance
Face-to-face Communication
Ephemeral
Communal (Event)
Re-creation
Variation
Tradition
Unconscious Structure
Collective Representations
Public (Ownership)
Diffusion
Memory (Recollection)
Written
Text
Indirect Communication
Permanent
Individual (Event)
Creation
Revision
Innovation
Conscious Design
Selective Representations
Private (ownership)
Distribution
Re-reading (Recollection)
 

 


Additional Resources

 

The following clips from films that were referenced within the readings, or chosen because of their relevance to this module.

 

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(from the film: The usual Suspects (1995, dir. Bryan Singer)

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 (from the film: Home Alone (1990, dir. Chris Columbus)

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(from the film: Rebecca (1940, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) 

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(from the film: Blade Runner Director's Cut (1992, dir. Ridin) 

 

References

 

Murphet, J. (2005). Narrative voice. In H. Fulton, R. Huisman, J. Murphy & A. Dunn (Eds.), Narrative and media (pp. 73-85). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Murphet, J. (2005). Point of view. In H. Fulton, R. Huisman, J. Murphy & A. Dunn (Eds.), Narrative and media (pp. 86-95). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Talib, I. S. (2004, July). Narrative Theory. Retrieved June 10, 2007, from
 
Zipes, J. (1979). Once there was a time. In breaking the magic spell: Radical theories of folk and fairy tales (pp. 1-19). Austin: University of Texas Press.
 

 

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Back to the Course Wiki] http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellibst/NarrativeTheory/index.htm

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