Understanding Narrative Theory and Applications

Teaching and Learning with Mr. Miller Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Teaching and Learning with Mr. Miller. Today we're looking at narrative and this follows on from our last one on genre. The next one will be on representation and then we've covered genre, narrative and representation. So we've done all of the elements of macro film macro media analysis now this is just an introduction to narrative theory so we're not going to be going into too much detail but this class would be good if you're doing narrative analysis or even if you're looking to create a narrative maybe for something a little bit more creative a bit more vocational like a BTEC course or something. So let's get started. Let's get started with a description of what we mean by narrative and essentially how that differs from story. So the description or the definition of story is a sequence of events. So story exists everywhere in the world. When something happens and it's followed by something else and then followed by something else you've got a story. So whether that be a truly exciting story of something like the Titanic maybe or it's a really boring story of someone going down to the shops to get you know you know, a carton of milk. There's still stories, okay? Those things have happened. And these are always chronological. These happen in order of time. So it's going to be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, for example, okay? The first thing happens first, and then the second thing happens second, okay? That's just the way story works. It is always chronological. It's always in order of time. Now, we don't really look at story much in media and film. What we look at more is narrative, and narrative is how we tell that story. story so it's the telling of these sequence of events so someone comes up with a story and then what they do is they write a script if it's a film for example and they write a script which tells that story and it might tell that story in order or it might tell that story out of order i suppose an easier example would be to actually think about story that already exists so we'll stick with the film titanic that actually happened it may have not happened exactly the same as in the film but there was a story there was a ship called the titanic it's at sail hidden iceberg it's it sunk we all know that now the narrative the telling of these sequence events tells that in a slightly different order you know we've got two stories or two narratives kind of going on we've got the modern day and we've also got the one back in 1911 1912 can't remember exactly when it was now the reason why i've used one two three four five six seven eight nine is because i'm going to use star wars as an example star wars seems to be a series of films that everyone's seen everyone's familiar with and even if you haven't seen them i think it's still understandable exactly you know the characters what kind of happens now the story of star wars was episode one episode two episode three so that was uh anakin as a child growing up and the end of episode three becoming darth vader then we've got four five and six where we're introduced to luke skywalker and then we've got um six seven eight or what is that seven eight nine isn't it sorry yes and so we had the force awakens there so that's the order of the story that's not the order that the films were made but that's the order of the story now the narrative actually started with episode four back in the 70s with a new hope so we had episode four episode five episode six then in 1999 we had episode one and it was followed by episode two and episode three and then in 2000 and what was it 15 or 16 can't remember and we had episode uh seven eight and nine or episode seven eight and nine so the narrative of star wars is different to the story of star wars george lucas who's told the story has chosen to do it a little bit differently now my recommendation would be to you know do a little bit of research into different types of narratives one of my favorite styles here is from a film called memento where the story starts with the beginning the middle and then the end but the way the narrative tells it is the film actually starts with the end of the narrative and then it goes into the middle then it goes to the beginning so the end of the film is the beginning of the story it's quite unusual but it's a very interesting way of doing things so just to clarify their story is a sequence of events that exists in the world narrative is how these media producers have decided to tell this narrative. Now I'll put this a link to Memento at the top there so you'll be able to see that and you'll be able to watch that at your own time. Okay so let's start looking at some narrative paradigms and narrative theories now. Now the first one we're going to look at is Sid Field's narrative paradigm. Just as a disclaimer this is a stock photo that isn't Sid Field. I just like the image of an old school writer very much like Sid Field. Now he came up with a narrative theory a narrative paradigm that is a little bit more complex than what I'm going to explain now. I'm just going to explain the very basics of it. Reason being is because even though it is blindingly obvious and everyone I think already knows it. this. It is just a nice place to start and that is that every narrative has three acts. Now this isn't obviously every narrative and there's always exceptions to the rule but we're going to focus more on the rules. I guess and that is act one act two act three so Sid Field said that every narrative will use film as more of an example because many of my students are going to be using this for film analysis as well as media analysis so every film okay which has a narrative which is a retelling of these events is act one act two and act three and that's the beginning middle and end now like i said this is not his full narrative paradigm there is actually little plot points that he's put in there but the reason i just want to start with this is because the other theories are that I'm going to start talking about in a minute, I'm going to have a lot more context after, you know, the beginning, middle and end. Now the beginning we can call the setup, the middle we can call the confrontation and the end we can call the conclusion or the resolution as we need to. And I don't think we need to really talk any more about that because that's actually quite obvious there. So let's move straight on then with Todorov's narrative paradigm. Again, that's not Todorov, that's just from the same photographer doing those stock photos. I thought it looked good. as an old school photo there. So you can see the example I'm going to be using now. I'm going to use the Hunger Games in a second, and I'll put a little link at the top in a second. So you can go and watch the trailer for the Hunger Games. If you haven't seen it, I'll try not to spoil the story for you. But we'll be talking about the beginning, middle and end. And you kind of get that in the trailer as well. So now what we're looking at is looking at Todorov's narrative paradigm, which actually builds upon Sid Field's narrative paradigm. He is saying that even though we still have these three. acts beginning middle and end there's actually five stages within those three acts so we've still got act one act two and act three the beginning the middle and the end but within those beginning middle and end we've got the in the first act the equilibrium and the disruption so they're the first two stages the equilibrium and the disruption so the equilibrium means the normal okay so it means whatever's normal in the universe the film universe for the characters that may not be normal for us when we watch the hunger game the equilibrium there would be very different for what we're used to but the characters within the film universe that is their normal now the disruption the second thing within the first act the second stage is where something happens usually an event a specific event and it disrupts the equilibrium okay it stops the equilibrium happening it stops the equilibrium being now that could be something like a bomb going off that could be something like someone gets kidnapped it could be something as stupid as someone falls over okay and something out of the order ordinary, drops their wallet maybe, and there you go, you've got a film about trying to restore that. So if you are creating your own narrative, sometimes it's important just to start with a disruption. What can happen that puts this thing into place? Now act two would be the obstacles. Sometimes it's called the search for resolution, it could be called many different things, it's been translated many different ways over time, but theory is still the same. I call it obstacles because that's what films tend to be, especially if we're using action films as examples, and action films follow this almost always absolutely perfectly and it's going to be the hero very often trying to defeat the villain because the villain is putting loads of different obstacles in place. In Act 3 we've got almost the mirror image of Act 1. We've got the resolution and the new equilibrium. So the resolution is the opposite to the disruption. Whatever disrupted the story the hero let's say has now resolved it. They've put something in place that now establishes a new equilibrium, a new normal. It's not going to go back to the same way it was in the beginning because obviously obviously things have changed, things have happened, but we now got a new equilibrium. If there was going to be a sequel, the new equilibrium would probably be the equilibrium of the next story. And if there's a third one, the new equilibrium of the second story or the second narrative would become the equilibrium of the third. Okay. Now one point to note, which might make it easier if you're creating a narrative or if you're trying to analyze the narrative is whatever the disruption is, the resolution is going to be the opposite to it. Now, an example. I'll give and I'll pop it up the top as well if you haven't seen it it's Die Hard so if you don't want me to spoil the ending of Die Hard you're going to want to skip ahead um a little bit now okay because I'm going to talk about that so the equilibrium of Die Hard is this man uh he flies over to Los Angeles to go and visit his estranged wife to try and make things up disruption terrorists enter through the bottom of the building okay there's loads of obstacles to be honest it doesn't really matter what happens in the middle of the film okay that could be anything what does matter is the resolution and the resolution is the opposite of the disruption. Terrorists enter through the bottom, while the boss of the terrorist gets thrown out the window at the top. So enter the bottom, thrown out the top. It's the opposite. And the new equilibrium, they go back to normal. Not perfectly back to normal. It seems like the hero and the love interest, the estranged wife, they've kind of reconsolidated their issues or they're going to, but whatever. So that's a good example. So now what we're going to do is we're going to watch the Hunger Games. If you want an activity, watch. the trailer for The Hunger Games even better watch the film the Hunger Games, and try and determine what is the equilibrium, what is the disruption, what are the obstacles, what are the resolution, what are the new equilibrium. If you don't want to do it with Hunger Games, watch another film or do it with the last film you've watched. I guarantee you pretty much 99% that the last thing that you watched is going to follow that three-act structure with the equilibrium, disruption, obstacles, resolution, and new equilibrium. If you're going to watch something like a TV show like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, you'll find that each episode has Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3. with these things that happen in it. And then actually each series has three acts. And then maybe the entire series together, the entire Breaking Bad 5 series has this. So we've got what's called overarching things. So we've got overarching narratives. So each episode works in a mini arc like that. And there's a bigger arc for the series and a bigger arc for all the series put together. And you could have multiple arcs happening. You could have one character's arc in an episode and another character's, two arcs going on at the same time. So even though this does sound, and it is by the way, incredibly simple, you can complicate it by just adding loads of them as you want to. So let's look at the next one here. Now we're looking at prop. And this is a guy called Vladimir Prop, by the way. So prop is with two Ps because it's a name, not to be confused with if you're analysing something like mise-en-scene and you're looking at costume, hair and makeup and props. Now... what Vladimir Prok did was he went around the world over a hundred years ago and he listened to loads of people's folk tales. And what he found out was, even though obviously every country has tales and narratives that are individual to them, he said that... that there are very strong similarities he said when they tell these stories there are things that keep popping up and he called these functions and he wrote down a list of 32 i think it might be 33 revised i can't remember um he said there were 32 functions um 32 of these things these these narratives these common tropes and narrative that keep popping up so if you're going to try and come up with a narrative what you might want to do is you might want to read those functions you can find them on wikipedia don't worry it's reliable and you can use those in your story if you wanted to you could read through them and see if any of them pop up in the last film that you've watched or maybe print the list off and next time you know you go and watch a film you go to the cinema go to a coffee shop afterwards and just see how many of those plot points did pop up did they work did they not work now i'm not really going to be focusing on the functions too much because um i want to focus on the character types and he said even though these narratives follow multiple functions he said there are actually certain character types that fulfill these functions and there are are lots of examples you can use for these. I would say that these character types pop up in pretty much every film, every TV show, even video games we're getting a lot of these now. But there are some examples where we get almost all of these characters. So what we've got is, first, the hero, the protagonist that goes on the quest. Now, protagonist, a basic definition of protagonist would be the hero. Actually, the protagonist is the one that overcomes the obstacles to restore the resolution. There might be multiple protagonists. So they are the one that goes on the quest. If you're watching Hollywood blockbusters, I think it's going to be easy to determine who the hero is. You've probably guessed what the next one is. If we've got a hero, we've got a villain, which is the antagonist. So they're the things, that's the... person who is or the thing you could say um who is putting things in place to oppose the hero they are putting the obstacles in place if it wasn't for the villain we probably wouldn't have the hero we wouldn't have a story The next one, the donor, the one to help the hero with resources of some sort. We've also got the dispatcher, so the one who sets the hero on their way. We've got the false hero, the one to tempt the hero away from the quest. The helper, the one to help the hero on their quest. And the princess, the one who acts as a reward. Now that might be, by the way, the love interest. And lastly, we've got the father, who's the one who gives the reward to the hero. Now, I'm not saying, and Prop wasn't saying, that you will find these character types in every... single story but he was saying that these do keep popping up now if you're going to look at something like uh harry potter you're going to find these these quite um quite regularly and we all know who the hero is in harry potter i mean it's harry potter isn't it's the name of the uh name of the series of films the the series of books i should say we've got the villain there's multiple villains you could argue but let's say voldemort's there uh don't want to help the hero with resources i don't know is that going to be you know maybe hagrid got the dispatcher the one to set the hero on their way way is that going to be Dumbledore the false hero is that the Malfoy character Helper we've got Ron the princess you could argue is Hermione but I think they actually went a little bit different with that didn't they you know she's not really the princess to Harry she's the princess to Ron so you know a little bit more complex and this and we got the father the one who gives the rewards to the hero now that might be Dumbledore and you know the dispatcher from Dona might be someone else if we're looking at something like Star Wars you can see that as well we all know we're looking at the first series of Star Wars we've got the hero who is Luke Skywalker we've got Darth Vader Dona the one to help the hero of resources we could say maybe that's Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi dispatcher could be the same as well they could both be both of those characters the false hero it's Han Solo there's a part in the first film where he says you know I'm just gonna leave you know You know, I'm not going to follow you on this journey. He does come back, obviously. The helper, I don't know, maybe it's the droids. The princess, you know, arguably that is the princess, although she doesn't act as a reward necessarily. They kind of change that. And father, the one who gives the rewards to the hero. Again, that might be Yoda or that might be Obi-Wan Kenobi. You know, these can chop and change and they can fulfill multiple roles. But again, like I said, not every narrative that you look at is going to fill every single one of those. So there's three theories that we've looked at now. So we've looked at Sid Field's. simple act one, act two, act three, beginning, middle and end. We've looked at Todorov's narrative paradigm where he builds on that by having the five stages. So beginning has the equilibrium and disruption, the middle has the obstacles and the ending has resolution and new equilibrium. And we've also looked at Prop's narrative paradigm where within those we've got offer, we've got multiple plot points that happen and also we have these types of characters. that very often appear. Now if you're going to be using this in some way for an exam, okay, my recommendation would be don't try and remember every single one of those character types there. Just try and get three. I always find that the hero and the villain are the easiest ones to remember and they usually appear. But then you often get something like the princess. By the way, the princess doesn't have to be gender there, by the way. The hero could be female and the princess could be male. Okay, so it doesn't have to be that way. But just try and remember a few of those if you're going to apply. apply for it. Often my rule is try number three, try and apply three examples. Now you probably are going to have to remember Todorov's narrative structure, which is equilibrium, disruption, obstacles, resolution, and new equilibrium. But to be honest, you'll probably remember Sid Field's narrative paradigm, but just remembering those. The best way to remember those guys is to apply them, is to analyze, is to think of examples. Now if you're doing something like GCSE media studies on AQA, like I'm teaching you, at the moment there are close study products there are case studies that we have to learn so don't go off learning new types of examples use the examples you've been given in your classes and try and remember it with those now other things that you might need to know and this might be relevant it might not but i'll cover it anyway are some narrative devices that you're very often going to find okay as you can see i've got loads of examples there and i'll try and pop them up and screen as well so you can get linked to them on youtube okay so the first one we're going to talk about is a McGuffin. This is a narrative device that Alfred Hitchcock actually coined. It's been used many different times, but he's the one that coined it. And a MacGuffin is a thing that drives the narrative forward. It does not matter what it is. An example I always use is there's a film, Humphrey Bogart film, called The Maltese Falcon. And the Maltese Falcon is a statue of a falcon, and it gets stolen, and he's got to retrieve it. Now, it doesn't matter what that object was. What matters is it went missing, and he's got to find it. If they didn't exist, there would be no story. It could be anything. It could be a bag of potatoes. As long as it sets the journey on the way, that MacGuffin will work. Now, very often you're going to find those in action-adventure films. If you're creating a narrative of your own, maybe start there. Just have an object, it goes missing, and there you go. And that's the name of your film. The example I've got there is Pulp Fiction. It's probably popping up on the screen now. You can watch the clip I've got. The MacGuffin in this is going to be the briefcase with the light in it. there and Quentin Tarantino is obviously playing on the idea of it being a MacGuffin you know everyone says what is in the briefcase doesn't matter what's in the briefcase what matters is the quest that they're going on for the briefcase okay and he knows that it doesn't matter what's in there it's why he never shows you he makes a joke of it next one and you've probably heard of this many times we've got flashbacks and flash forwards so flashback would be if you're in the narrative and there'll be a scene that was way before it okay and a flash forward would be the opposite. So we've got a scene, a period in time, and all of a sudden the screen will show us something that happens in the future. Now that goes back to what I was talking about with the idea of narrative being able to be chronological and non-chronological. So story is always chronological. Stories can't have flashbacks or flash forwards. But you might do your narrative, for example, might start in the middle and then go to the end and start over again. And somewhere in the middle of that narrative, You might have flashbacks. The example I've got there is Casablanca. So watch Casablanca. It's a bit of a cheesy example, despite Casablanca being, without a doubt, one of the best films ever made. Check it out if you haven't seen it. But it's a bit of a cheesy example. The reason I love it is because you can clearly see it's a flashback. okay the expression on his face changes when it goes to flashback to when he was back in a happier time so we go back a couple of years non-chronological narrative there we've got foreshadowing and the example i've got for foreshadowing is the world's end um now foreshadowing Foreshadowing means that something happens in the narrative and then it happens later. Maybe exactly the same, maybe in a bit of a different way. Edgar Wright there in World's End is playing on the foreshadowing idea. And actually what happens in the rest of the story is summed up in the beginning scene. You know, where they go to each different pub for a drink. It explains that. And I think they're showing children at the beginning and then it kind of happens when they're adults. You get foreshadowing quite a lot. One of my favourites is Chekhov's Ghost. gun Chekhov's gun means something that you see on screen if it's a film will be used later so if you've seen it it will be used later and the idea comes from actually from a stage play and if you remember stage plays are probably going to be quite minimalistic you don't need many props you don't need much set dressing and Chekhov said if you're watching a play and there's a gun obviously it's going to be used isn't it that's why it's called Chekhov's gun the example I've got is from Thelma and Louise where there's literally an example example of Chekhov's gun being a gun where they're packing up and Thelma or Louise can't remember who it is I think it's Thelma she's packing to go on this trip on this camping trip and she opens a drawer and she picks up a gun and she puts in a bag and there's a close-up of it now as an audience member we should know if we're thinking actively that gun's going to be used later and it is used later we've got Poetic Justice probably the easiest one to see especially if you're going to watch something like Disney films I've got the Lion King there which is the good guys get the good good thing the bad guys get the bad thing uh people like poetic justice people actually don't like bad things happening to good people and people don't like good things happening to bad people so poetic justice the uh the bad guy gets their comeuppance at the end and i've got that in the lion king and the last one is my least favorite um and actually i think it's many audiences least favorite is deus ex machina which translates to i think god in the machine and basically it's something happens in the narrative out of the character's control to finish it all off and that's we've got their jurassic park we've got deus ex machina at the very end and it's people don't like it because it it seems like a lazy writing and narrative device you know something just comes out of the blue and helps them in jurassic park it's a case of in the very last scene or one of the last scenes we've got um our main characters and the children and they're being attacked by the velociraptors and at the very last moment the tyrannosaurus rex just bursts through and eats them the the velociraptors i should say in You know, it's kind of like, well, those characters did nothing, did they, to actually get out themselves? It was a pure accident or an act of God. People don't like that so much. Okay, guys. Now, if you've got any more time and you want to study into this further, my recommendation would be to actually do one of two things. One, go and analyze a narrative, okay? Now, chances are you're watching films and TV shows anyway. That's just naturally what you do. So either go and watch one now or think about one that you've just watched and see if any of them are good. of those things are going in there and see if anything things any of these things pop up see what narrative structures they follow now if you are going to be doing anything creative create a story using these i will be doing a class on idea generation at another time which might be a little bit more helpful a little bit more in depth but just see what sort of things you found and then copy them okay also another thing that you should do is if you are preparing for an exam or something let's say you've got loads of case studies that you've but you've got to revise see how many of these you can apply to it's not always going to be relevant your exam question may have nothing to do with narrative and i shouldn't need to say it but if your exam question has nothing to do with narrative don't start writing about narrative obviously um but if it does then you can start talking about that how is narrative applied to this text or this text or this text um so start analyzing that now if you have any questions you have any comments put them down in the comment section below and i'll try and get those answered otherwise thanks so much guys and i'll see you next time for representation bye Bye.

So we've done all of the elements of macro film macro media analysis now this is just an introduction to narrative theory so we're not going to be going into too much detail but this class would be good if you're doing narrative analysis or even if you're looking to create a narrative maybe for something a little bit more creative a bit more vocational like a BTEC course or something. So let's get started. Let's get started with a description of what we mean by narrative and essentially how that differs from story. So the description or the definition of story is a sequence of events. So story exists everywhere in the world.

When something happens and it's followed by something else and then followed by something else you've got a story. So whether that be a truly exciting story of something like the Titanic maybe or it's a really boring story of someone going down to the shops to get you know you know, a carton of milk. There's still stories, okay? Those things have happened. And these are always chronological.

These happen in order of time. So it's going to be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, for example, okay? The first thing happens first, and then the second thing happens second, okay?

That's just the way story works. It is always chronological. It's always in order of time.

Now, we don't really look at story much in media and film. What we look at more is narrative, and narrative is how we tell that story. story so it's the telling of these sequence of events so someone comes up with a story and then what they do is they write a script if it's a film for example and they write a script which tells that story and it might tell that story in order or it might tell that story out of order i suppose an easier example would be to actually think about story that already exists so we'll stick with the film titanic that actually happened it may have not happened exactly the same as in the film but there was a story there was a ship called the titanic it's at sail hidden iceberg it's it sunk we all know that now the narrative the telling of these sequence events tells that in a slightly different order you know we've got two stories or two narratives kind of going on we've got the modern day and we've also got the one back in 1911 1912 can't remember exactly when it was now the reason why i've used one two three four five six seven eight nine is because i'm going to use star wars as an example star wars seems to be a series of films that everyone's seen everyone's familiar with and even if you haven't seen them i think it's still understandable exactly you know the characters what kind of happens now the story of star wars was episode one episode two episode three so that was uh anakin as a child growing up and the end of episode three becoming darth vader then we've got four five and six where we're introduced to luke skywalker and then we've got um six seven eight or what is that seven eight nine isn't it sorry yes and so we had the force awakens there so that's the order of the story that's not the order that the films were made but that's the order of the story now the narrative actually started with episode four back in the 70s with a new hope so we had episode four episode five episode six then in 1999 we had episode one and it was followed by episode two and episode three and then in 2000 and what was it 15 or 16 can't remember and we had episode uh seven eight and nine or episode seven eight and nine so the narrative of star wars is different to the story of star wars george lucas who's told the story has chosen to do it a little bit differently now my recommendation would be to you know do a little bit of research into different types of narratives one of my favorite styles here is from a film called memento where the story starts with the beginning the middle and then the end but the way the narrative tells it is the film actually starts with the end of the narrative and then it goes into the middle then it goes to the beginning so the end of the film is the beginning of the story it's quite unusual but it's a very interesting way of doing things so just to clarify their story is a sequence of events that exists in the world narrative is how these media producers have decided to tell this narrative.

Now I'll put this a link to Memento at the top there so you'll be able to see that and you'll be able to watch that at your own time. Okay so let's start looking at some narrative paradigms and narrative theories now. Now the first one we're going to look at is Sid Field's narrative paradigm. Just as a disclaimer this is a stock photo that isn't Sid Field.

I just like the image of an old school writer very much like Sid Field. Now he came up with a narrative theory a narrative paradigm that is a little bit more complex than what I'm going to explain now. I'm just going to explain the very basics of it.

Reason being is because even though it is blindingly obvious and everyone I think already knows it. this. It is just a nice place to start and that is that every narrative has three acts. Now this isn't obviously every narrative and there's always exceptions to the rule but we're going to focus more on the rules.

I guess and that is act one act two act three so Sid Field said that every narrative will use film as more of an example because many of my students are going to be using this for film analysis as well as media analysis so every film okay which has a narrative which is a retelling of these events is act one act two and act three and that's the beginning middle and end now like i said this is not his full narrative paradigm there is actually little plot points that he's put in there but the reason i just want to start with this is because the other theories are that I'm going to start talking about in a minute, I'm going to have a lot more context after, you know, the beginning, middle and end. Now the beginning we can call the setup, the middle we can call the confrontation and the end we can call the conclusion or the resolution as we need to. And I don't think we need to really talk any more about that because that's actually quite obvious there.

So let's move straight on then with Todorov's narrative paradigm. Again, that's not Todorov, that's just from the same photographer doing those stock photos. I thought it looked good.

as an old school photo there. So you can see the example I'm going to be using now. I'm going to use the Hunger Games in a second, and I'll put a little link at the top in a second.

So you can go and watch the trailer for the Hunger Games. If you haven't seen it, I'll try not to spoil the story for you. But we'll be talking about the beginning, middle and end.

And you kind of get that in the trailer as well. So now what we're looking at is looking at Todorov's narrative paradigm, which actually builds upon Sid Field's narrative paradigm. He is saying that even though we still have these three. acts beginning middle and end there's actually five stages within those three acts so we've still got act one act two and act three the beginning the middle and the end but within those beginning middle and end we've got the in the first act the equilibrium and the disruption so they're the first two stages the equilibrium and the disruption so the equilibrium means the normal okay so it means whatever's normal in the universe the film universe for the characters that may not be normal for us when we watch the hunger game the equilibrium there would be very different for what we're used to but the characters within the film universe that is their normal now the disruption the second thing within the first act the second stage is where something happens usually an event a specific event and it disrupts the equilibrium okay it stops the equilibrium happening it stops the equilibrium being now that could be something like a bomb going off that could be something like someone gets kidnapped it could be something as stupid as someone falls over okay and something out of the order ordinary, drops their wallet maybe, and there you go, you've got a film about trying to restore that. So if you are creating your own narrative, sometimes it's important just to start with a disruption.

What can happen that puts this thing into place? Now act two would be the obstacles. Sometimes it's called the search for resolution, it could be called many different things, it's been translated many different ways over time, but theory is still the same. I call it obstacles because that's what films tend to be, especially if we're using action films as examples, and action films follow this almost always absolutely perfectly and it's going to be the hero very often trying to defeat the villain because the villain is putting loads of different obstacles in place. In Act 3 we've got almost the mirror image of Act 1. We've got the resolution and the new equilibrium.

So the resolution is the opposite to the disruption. Whatever disrupted the story the hero let's say has now resolved it. They've put something in place that now establishes a new equilibrium, a new normal.

It's not going to go back to the same way it was in the beginning because obviously obviously things have changed, things have happened, but we now got a new equilibrium. If there was going to be a sequel, the new equilibrium would probably be the equilibrium of the next story. And if there's a third one, the new equilibrium of the second story or the second narrative would become the equilibrium of the third. Okay.

Now one point to note, which might make it easier if you're creating a narrative or if you're trying to analyze the narrative is whatever the disruption is, the resolution is going to be the opposite to it. Now, an example. I'll give and I'll pop it up the top as well if you haven't seen it it's Die Hard so if you don't want me to spoil the ending of Die Hard you're going to want to skip ahead um a little bit now okay because I'm going to talk about that so the equilibrium of Die Hard is this man uh he flies over to Los Angeles to go and visit his estranged wife to try and make things up disruption terrorists enter through the bottom of the building okay there's loads of obstacles to be honest it doesn't really matter what happens in the middle of the film okay that could be anything what does matter is the resolution and the resolution is the opposite of the disruption.

Terrorists enter through the bottom, while the boss of the terrorist gets thrown out the window at the top. So enter the bottom, thrown out the top. It's the opposite. And the new equilibrium, they go back to normal.

Not perfectly back to normal. It seems like the hero and the love interest, the estranged wife, they've kind of reconsolidated their issues or they're going to, but whatever. So that's a good example. So now what we're going to do is we're going to watch the Hunger Games. If you want an activity, watch.

the trailer for The Hunger Games even better watch the film the Hunger Games, and try and determine what is the equilibrium, what is the disruption, what are the obstacles, what are the resolution, what are the new equilibrium. If you don't want to do it with Hunger Games, watch another film or do it with the last film you've watched. I guarantee you pretty much 99% that the last thing that you watched is going to follow that three-act structure with the equilibrium, disruption, obstacles, resolution, and new equilibrium. If you're going to watch something like a TV show like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, you'll find that each episode has Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3. with these things that happen in it.

And then actually each series has three acts. And then maybe the entire series together, the entire Breaking Bad 5 series has this. So we've got what's called overarching things. So we've got overarching narratives.

So each episode works in a mini arc like that. And there's a bigger arc for the series and a bigger arc for all the series put together. And you could have multiple arcs happening.

You could have one character's arc in an episode and another character's, two arcs going on at the same time. So even though this does sound, and it is by the way, incredibly simple, you can complicate it by just adding loads of them as you want to. So let's look at the next one here. Now we're looking at prop.

And this is a guy called Vladimir Prop, by the way. So prop is with two Ps because it's a name, not to be confused with if you're analysing something like mise-en-scene and you're looking at costume, hair and makeup and props. Now...

what Vladimir Prok did was he went around the world over a hundred years ago and he listened to loads of people's folk tales. And what he found out was, even though obviously every country has tales and narratives that are individual to them, he said that... that there are very strong similarities he said when they tell these stories there are things that keep popping up and he called these functions and he wrote down a list of 32 i think it might be 33 revised i can't remember um he said there were 32 functions um 32 of these things these these narratives these common tropes and narrative that keep popping up so if you're going to try and come up with a narrative what you might want to do is you might want to read those functions you can find them on wikipedia don't worry it's reliable and you can use those in your story if you wanted to you could read through them and see if any of them pop up in the last film that you've watched or maybe print the list off and next time you know you go and watch a film you go to the cinema go to a coffee shop afterwards and just see how many of those plot points did pop up did they work did they not work now i'm not really going to be focusing on the functions too much because um i want to focus on the character types and he said even though these narratives follow multiple functions he said there are actually certain character types that fulfill these functions and there are are lots of examples you can use for these.

I would say that these character types pop up in pretty much every film, every TV show, even video games we're getting a lot of these now. But there are some examples where we get almost all of these characters. So what we've got is, first, the hero, the protagonist that goes on the quest.

Now, protagonist, a basic definition of protagonist would be the hero. Actually, the protagonist is the one that overcomes the obstacles to restore the resolution. There might be multiple protagonists.

So they are the one that goes on the quest. If you're watching Hollywood blockbusters, I think it's going to be easy to determine who the hero is. You've probably guessed what the next one is. If we've got a hero, we've got a villain, which is the antagonist.

So they're the things, that's the... person who is or the thing you could say um who is putting things in place to oppose the hero they are putting the obstacles in place if it wasn't for the villain we probably wouldn't have the hero we wouldn't have a story The next one, the donor, the one to help the hero with resources of some sort. We've also got the dispatcher, so the one who sets the hero on their way. We've got the false hero, the one to tempt the hero away from the quest. The helper, the one to help the hero on their quest.

And the princess, the one who acts as a reward. Now that might be, by the way, the love interest. And lastly, we've got the father, who's the one who gives the reward to the hero. Now, I'm not saying, and Prop wasn't saying, that you will find these character types in every... single story but he was saying that these do keep popping up now if you're going to look at something like uh harry potter you're going to find these these quite um quite regularly and we all know who the hero is in harry potter i mean it's harry potter isn't it's the name of the uh name of the series of films the the series of books i should say we've got the villain there's multiple villains you could argue but let's say voldemort's there uh don't want to help the hero with resources i don't know is that going to be you know maybe hagrid got the dispatcher the one to set the hero on their way way is that going to be Dumbledore the false hero is that the Malfoy character Helper we've got Ron the princess you could argue is Hermione but I think they actually went a little bit different with that didn't they you know she's not really the princess to Harry she's the princess to Ron so you know a little bit more complex and this and we got the father the one who gives the rewards to the hero now that might be Dumbledore and you know the dispatcher from Dona might be someone else if we're looking at something like Star Wars you can see that as well we all know we're looking at the first series of Star Wars we've got the hero who is Luke Skywalker we've got Darth Vader Dona the one to help the hero of resources we could say maybe that's Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi dispatcher could be the same as well they could both be both of those characters the false hero it's Han Solo there's a part in the first film where he says you know I'm just gonna leave you know You know, I'm not going to follow you on this journey.

He does come back, obviously. The helper, I don't know, maybe it's the droids. The princess, you know, arguably that is the princess, although she doesn't act as a reward necessarily. They kind of change that. And father, the one who gives the rewards to the hero.

Again, that might be Yoda or that might be Obi-Wan Kenobi. You know, these can chop and change and they can fulfill multiple roles. But again, like I said, not every narrative that you look at is going to fill every single one of those. So there's three theories that we've looked at now. So we've looked at Sid Field's.

simple act one, act two, act three, beginning, middle and end. We've looked at Todorov's narrative paradigm where he builds on that by having the five stages. So beginning has the equilibrium and disruption, the middle has the obstacles and the ending has resolution and new equilibrium.

And we've also looked at Prop's narrative paradigm where within those we've got offer, we've got multiple plot points that happen and also we have these types of characters. that very often appear. Now if you're going to be using this in some way for an exam, okay, my recommendation would be don't try and remember every single one of those character types there.

Just try and get three. I always find that the hero and the villain are the easiest ones to remember and they usually appear. But then you often get something like the princess.

By the way, the princess doesn't have to be gender there, by the way. The hero could be female and the princess could be male. Okay, so it doesn't have to be that way. But just try and remember a few of those if you're going to apply.

apply for it. Often my rule is try number three, try and apply three examples. Now you probably are going to have to remember Todorov's narrative structure, which is equilibrium, disruption, obstacles, resolution, and new equilibrium. But to be honest, you'll probably remember Sid Field's narrative paradigm, but just remembering those. The best way to remember those guys is to apply them, is to analyze, is to think of examples.

Now if you're doing something like GCSE media studies on AQA, like I'm teaching you, at the moment there are close study products there are case studies that we have to learn so don't go off learning new types of examples use the examples you've been given in your classes and try and remember it with those now other things that you might need to know and this might be relevant it might not but i'll cover it anyway are some narrative devices that you're very often going to find okay as you can see i've got loads of examples there and i'll try and pop them up and screen as well so you can get linked to them on youtube okay so the first one we're going to talk about is a McGuffin. This is a narrative device that Alfred Hitchcock actually coined. It's been used many different times, but he's the one that coined it. And a MacGuffin is a thing that drives the narrative forward.

It does not matter what it is. An example I always use is there's a film, Humphrey Bogart film, called The Maltese Falcon. And the Maltese Falcon is a statue of a falcon, and it gets stolen, and he's got to retrieve it. Now, it doesn't matter what that object was.

What matters is it went missing, and he's got to find it. If they didn't exist, there would be no story. It could be anything.

It could be a bag of potatoes. As long as it sets the journey on the way, that MacGuffin will work. Now, very often you're going to find those in action-adventure films.

If you're creating a narrative of your own, maybe start there. Just have an object, it goes missing, and there you go. And that's the name of your film. The example I've got there is Pulp Fiction.

It's probably popping up on the screen now. You can watch the clip I've got. The MacGuffin in this is going to be the briefcase with the light in it.

there and Quentin Tarantino is obviously playing on the idea of it being a MacGuffin you know everyone says what is in the briefcase doesn't matter what's in the briefcase what matters is the quest that they're going on for the briefcase okay and he knows that it doesn't matter what's in there it's why he never shows you he makes a joke of it next one and you've probably heard of this many times we've got flashbacks and flash forwards so flashback would be if you're in the narrative and there'll be a scene that was way before it okay and a flash forward would be the opposite. So we've got a scene, a period in time, and all of a sudden the screen will show us something that happens in the future. Now that goes back to what I was talking about with the idea of narrative being able to be chronological and non-chronological. So story is always chronological.

Stories can't have flashbacks or flash forwards. But you might do your narrative, for example, might start in the middle and then go to the end and start over again. And somewhere in the middle of that narrative, You might have flashbacks.

The example I've got there is Casablanca. So watch Casablanca. It's a bit of a cheesy example, despite Casablanca being, without a doubt, one of the best films ever made.

Check it out if you haven't seen it. But it's a bit of a cheesy example. The reason I love it is because you can clearly see it's a flashback. okay the expression on his face changes when it goes to flashback to when he was back in a happier time so we go back a couple of years non-chronological narrative there we've got foreshadowing and the example i've got for foreshadowing is the world's end um now foreshadowing Foreshadowing means that something happens in the narrative and then it happens later. Maybe exactly the same, maybe in a bit of a different way.

Edgar Wright there in World's End is playing on the foreshadowing idea. And actually what happens in the rest of the story is summed up in the beginning scene. You know, where they go to each different pub for a drink. It explains that. And I think they're showing children at the beginning and then it kind of happens when they're adults.

You get foreshadowing quite a lot. One of my favourites is Chekhov's Ghost. gun Chekhov's gun means something that you see on screen if it's a film will be used later so if you've seen it it will be used later and the idea comes from actually from a stage play and if you remember stage plays are probably going to be quite minimalistic you don't need many props you don't need much set dressing and Chekhov said if you're watching a play and there's a gun obviously it's going to be used isn't it that's why it's called Chekhov's gun the example I've got is from Thelma and Louise where there's literally an example example of Chekhov's gun being a gun where they're packing up and Thelma or Louise can't remember who it is I think it's Thelma she's packing to go on this trip on this camping trip and she opens a drawer and she picks up a gun and she puts in a bag and there's a close-up of it now as an audience member we should know if we're thinking actively that gun's going to be used later and it is used later we've got Poetic Justice probably the easiest one to see especially if you're going to watch something like Disney films I've got the Lion King there which is the good guys get the good good thing the bad guys get the bad thing uh people like poetic justice people actually don't like bad things happening to good people and people don't like good things happening to bad people so poetic justice the uh the bad guy gets their comeuppance at the end and i've got that in the lion king and the last one is my least favorite um and actually i think it's many audiences least favorite is deus ex machina which translates to i think god in the machine and basically it's something happens in the narrative out of the character's control to finish it all off and that's we've got their jurassic park we've got deus ex machina at the very end and it's people don't like it because it it seems like a lazy writing and narrative device you know something just comes out of the blue and helps them in jurassic park it's a case of in the very last scene or one of the last scenes we've got um our main characters and the children and they're being attacked by the velociraptors and at the very last moment the tyrannosaurus rex just bursts through and eats them the the velociraptors i should say in You know, it's kind of like, well, those characters did nothing, did they, to actually get out themselves? It was a pure accident or an act of God. People don't like that so much.

Okay, guys. Now, if you've got any more time and you want to study into this further, my recommendation would be to actually do one of two things. One, go and analyze a narrative, okay?

Now, chances are you're watching films and TV shows anyway. That's just naturally what you do. So either go and watch one now or think about one that you've just watched and see if any of them are good.

of those things are going in there and see if anything things any of these things pop up see what narrative structures they follow now if you are going to be doing anything creative create a story using these i will be doing a class on idea generation at another time which might be a little bit more helpful a little bit more in depth but just see what sort of things you found and then copy them okay also another thing that you should do is if you are preparing for an exam or something let's say you've got loads of case studies that you've but you've got to revise see how many of these you can apply to it's not always going to be relevant your exam question may have nothing to do with narrative and i shouldn't need to say it but if your exam question has nothing to do with narrative don't start writing about narrative obviously um but if it does then you can start talking about that how is narrative applied to this text or this text or this text um so start analyzing that now if you have any questions you have any comments put them down in the comment section below and i'll try and get those answered otherwise thanks so much guys and i'll see you next time for representation bye Bye.

Transcript for:Understanding Narrative Theory and Applications

Transcript for:
Understanding Narrative Theory and Applications