question evaluation

Explain how you used conventional or experimental narrative approaches in your production

With regards to our main A2 production task, we had to research narrative techniques in pure detail. We started off by looking at theories and narrative models such as Tristan Todorov’s theory towards narration. This intertwines with our main story plot line – as we follow his theory, throughout our trailer. Our main character is Sarah, who is the daughter of a gang leader, following the disturbance of using Todorov’s theory we have a equilibrium disturbance in many of our trailer scenes showing the violence and hurt through a love relationship – with a final outcome of revenge. We also used conventional approaches but mixed into experimental narrative approaches. We did this in many ways but one important example would be our voice over overlapping our film shots to create a third person perspective on the feel of the trailer. However the narration does not explain the storyline, it merely entices the audience into what its all about.

With regards to the plot time, the trailer reacts through the experiences of shot times and screen times, using fast motion – to slow motion shots of running/fighting scenes. This helps to confuse the reading audience of what real time reality actually is, and also contrasts without giving too much information on what happens. Going back to character types, our trailer production used theory ideas from Propp, who has eight different examples of character types. We used the Father figure – who ended up being the dispatcher, the villan – who was his daughter in the end, betraying her family – to set out to destroy her father. We also used character types such as the helper and the donor, however with regards to the donor character type Propp implies that with a donor they would need to give some sort of prop or skill to another character, this relates to our father figure giving the assassin the job of killing the two lovers – however this shows our trailer does not exactly intertwine or correspond with Propp’s theory of character types.