Analysis of Narrative Structures

Now that we have decided on our genre (Film Noir) and planned a general synopsis of our production, we looked at some narrative structures that current films follow to give us an idea on how we need to adapt our ideas to fit a structure. We discarded most ideas because they simply didn't fit the style of a Film Noir, but managed to narrow it down to two ideas which can be seen below:

The first narrative structure is 'Vladimir Propp', and the whole idea of the structure revolves around the characters. If we were to adapt our narrative to suit this, we would have to create seven different characters to build up the plot. The whole idea of this structure is that every character has an effect on the way the plot pans out, and each of these characters has a role with exactly what they do in the relation to other characters. This structure would work, however we decided that as whole it wouldn't suit our production because we are only filming the opening title sequence, so even if we designed all of these characters we wouldn't actually be able to involve them in the filming process. Another reason why we decided against this type of structure is the fact that it doesn't follow the conventions of a Film Noir. Traditional Noir's start with the end of the film, and usually feature two main characters (the everyman, and the femme fatal), but the 'Vladimir Propp' structure features far too many characters, which simply wouldn't fit the conventions of a Film Noir.

The second narrative structure we looked at fully was the 'Enigma Code'. This structure is usually related to a mystery, and used in relation to genres of thrillers and crime. It is also designed so that the audience become instantly engaged with the film, and attempt to guess the solution of the mystery. Generally, this narrative structure fits a lot of the conventions of a Film Noir, which makes it more suitable for our production. For example, the fact that the structure relates to a mystery fits the conventions of a Film Noir because they are usually about a dramatic event that has happened which we spend the majority of the film trying to figure out. Another part of the structure that relates to the conventions is the fact it is common with genres related to thrillers and crime. These genres are related and feature throughout a Film Noir so this structure relates to it well. As a whole, the 'Enigma Code' is more suited to a Film Noir, so we can relate our ideas to this structure to help us construct the plot.


Reflection:
Analysing these narrative structures was very useful for us, because we were able to get an idea on what structures actual films follow. With these structures in mind, we have been able to relate the 'Enigma Code' to a Film Noir, so we can analyse the structure and possibly compare it to our synopsis to help us have a full understanding on the layout of the plot. From this task, we all learnt how important it is to know the structure of a film, and not just attempt to create a plot for a film without an idea on the direction it has to go. To improve this task we could've analysed more structures to give us an even better understanding, but we decided to discard the rest because they didn't relate to our idea of a Film Noir enough.

Narrative Starting Ideas

Our task for Media is to recreate an opening title sequence of a particular chosen genre. For my final piece, I am working with Matthew and Heather, and we have started to plan a narrative for our production and discussed different ideas for a story. We started by talking about a genre, and landed on the idea of recreating a Film Noir as much as we can. To do this, we will need to have a full understanding of the conventions that a Film Noir has, and attempt to recreate these into our production. Soon, we will allocate roles to each of us to ensure that we have that full understanding of this particular genre of film. Research will have to be done on things such as sound, so that we know what the soundtracks generally are, not to mention the way the dialogue is embedded. We will also need to research typical camera angles used, and the way that these films were edited, and how, not to mention the mise-en-scene, such as costumes and location. Another aspect of research will be the audience of a Film Noir; with an understanding of who these films were generally aimed at, we will have a good idea on the way we need to adapt our production to suit this particular type of audience. As a starting point, we talked as a group about possible ideas for our film and also about how many characters we would plan to have and what the general idea would be. From this, we were then able to write out a general synopsis of the narrative that we want our story to follow. Obviously this is just a starting idea so we will undoubtedly build on this idea and develop it in different ways.

'Micky is staring in the mirror with a gun... Flashback:

He was a successful person, but he had a big secret.

He employs an assistant (femme-fatal) who finds out his secret but agrees to keep quiet by blackmailing Micky.

Leaves him broke.

In his anger he kills her.'

Reflection:

In terms of planning, this was a good starting point for us. We were able to pitch all of our possible ideas across to each other, and adapt each one as a group. This was also good because now that we have picked our genre (Film Noir), and created a general synopsis, we can move on to research and future planning for filming our production.

This task also had some negative aspects, which allowed each of us to learn what we need to do to improve as a group. The discussion we had about out genre and narrative took a long time, and we were quite indecisive at times about deciding exactly what direction we wanted our production to go in. With future discussions, we plan to try and be more decisive about the decisions we make, which will allow us to work faster and develop ideas quicker. If we had landed on a genre and narrative quicker, we could have adapted our piece further and perhaps starting thinking about other things such as a location for our filming, or what equipment we would use. Having said this, the synopsis above is a good starting point, and we are all happy with the ideas we have.

Consequences Task

After me and Jack had analysed the piece of paper containing the information about the story we had to develop, we decided to make a still image showing the characters in the story, the location, the title and the events that occur. The piece of paper with the ideas that we had to follow were very unusual, and it wasn't easy to construct a story that made much sense. Below is our attempt.

As you can see, the image shows the location of Paris, with the title 'Who knows what's really going on?' Our main character is Dino Dave, who had killed 'Wendy and her cat', and shot a man. The 'BANG' is the sound of the gun shot, and the scream from above is the woman screaming in terror.

Consequences Challenge

In class, we were each given a piece of paper and asked to write something on it relating to media. This could be anything from a location to a camera angle, or a character description. These pieces of paper were then passed around the class and each person wrote something different on it which related to media in some way. After everyone had wrote on each piece of paper, we opened what we had to see how we were going to construct the story of what we had. I worked with Jack on this task and the image below shows the piece of paper we had to work with. It contains a title, a character description and other aspects of the story.

Evaluation

Cinderella Evalution from Matthew Levesley on Vimeo.

After our production, we analysed what went well and what could have been done better.

Cinderella

This is our finalised version of the fairy tale Cinderella, modernised with the film noir genre.
cinderella SKUPINA STUDIOS from Matthew Levesley on Vimeo.

Storyboard - Continuity Task

Once we had appointed each other roles for the production and decided on characters for the narrative, we had to construct a storyboard showing the different scenes that we planned to film. To do this, we first chose different locations around the school that suited each scene in the film. Some locations were not available at school, so we used places outside of school such as our own homes. Once we had taken all of the necessary pictures, we uploaded them to a computer put them in chronological order of our narrative. They were then edited on photo shop to portray the 'noir' style, and finally put together as a finished storyboard.

Continuity Task

Before we jumped into any filming or production, we first had to analyse the task itself and chose an appropriate fairytale that we were all happy with. As you can see, the task itself is below. 

The Fairy Tale:

My group and I discussed different fairly tale's that we could possibly modernise into a film noir type of film, and we came to a decision to use the fairy tale of Cinderella.

Audience:

We decided to modernise Cinderella in certain ways to meet our decided target audience of teenagers. For example, when we planned the plot of the story and what would happen, we chose to change the idea of the 'fairy god mother' making Cinderella feel magical, and instead turn it into a drug that had the same effect. This idea is one of the many ways that we modernised this fairy tale.

Plot:

We then considered what the narrative of our modernised Cinderella would be like, and how things would happen and in what order. Some aspects of the original fairy tale were changed in order to modernise it to meet our desired audience and turn it into a neo-noir.

The plot follows a modern version of Cinderella who lives with her step father and her 'ugly step sister'. She gets invited to a house party instead of the ball and the 'ugly step sister' doesn't want her to go. She tells her father who vows to keep Cinderella in the house so she can't go. Cinderella then sneaks out of the house to take the 'pill' which is the modern version of the effects from the fairy god mother. She then attends the party where she loses her phone instead of her shoe. The prince finds her phone and returns it to her house where the 'ugly step sister' claims it to be hers, but cannot unlock it as she doesn't know the combination. Cinderella then comes through and unlocks the phone proving that it is indeed hers. Upon realising that the prince is falling in love with Cinderella, the step father kills him because he wanted him to marry his actual daughter, the 'ugly step sister'. 

Characters:

Prince- Matty Levesley c
Cinderella- Niamh Gallagher
Step Sister- Heather McDonald
Step Dad- Jack Grimshaw

Extras: as our group is quite small we asked some of our friends to feature as extras in the party and a police officer.

Camera- As there are different scenes requiring different actors we all filmed certain sections. We used a camcorder to record the film and an iPhone 6 for the still photos.

Director- We didn't want one person to take charge so we worked as a team to direct each other.

Editing- Niamh edited the story board into photoshop making the pictures black and white and contrasting the colours to fit the noir style. We all contributed to the editing of the production as a group.

Foley Sound

Definition:
A 'foley' sound is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that have been incorporated into a film or TV programme as well as other forms of media to enhance the overall quality.
An example of 'foley' sound is a door squeaking, or glass breaking. The sounds are all real to make the production seem more realistic.