Film structure: Narrative and Narration

Book: by Warren Buckland Title: Teach yourself film studies

"Shot B, of the man collapsing, followed by shot A, of another man firing a gun. The logic of the two shots is incomprehensible to the extent that the spectator cannot understand the event of the man collapsing as being caused by the event of the man shooting the gun."

This quote here shows that stories can be told in a lot of different ways and that these different ways can have a lot of different uses to them to effect how the spectator is able to understand the whole concept of the film. Whether this it being making the audience not understand what the film means or whether that means letting the audience know what the whole if the movie means. Just reversing or switching one of the scenes in the film can effect how the audience sees the narrative of the film. This use of narration has been experimented by only the greatest of Directors and has been pulled off directors like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch just for examples.

"They are not relevant to the film's cause-effect logic, since they would not cause any effects in subsequent parts of the film."

This quotation from this article shows that no one shot is unimportant to a film and that every shot that a director decides to put in a film has a meaning and is not just in the film for a filler to try and make the film seem worthwhile. Every scene in a film contributes to the cause-effect logic that is needed to make the movie progress and actually make sense. That is why there are so many scenes in a film where something important has to happen even if it does not seem like it is important at the time. For example the Triad blowing up Brian O'Connors car in The fast and furious made Brian have to get Dominic Toretto a 10 second which they ultimately worked on together and that bond has now spanned across 7 movies in The Fast and Furious franchise. So even the smallest scene has an cause and effect to it.

"Flashbacks are evident in films noirs (such as mildred pierce and double indemnity) and are one of the main devices that create the complex and convoluted narratives that are typical of film noir."

This device is used in a lot of media s nowadays like TV shows and movies a film that is a great example of the use of flashbacks is the film Kill Bill this is because. This movie is about a woman getting revenge for the murder of her husband and the attempted murder of her and this movie uses flashback as lot to express what happened her past for her to get to the point where she is at by the end of the movie. This is why flashbacks are used to reflect the themes of the the movie but to also emphasise the the feeling of the character or characters. But also to confuse the audience and keep them thinking about what is going to happen next in the present day based on what has happened in the past this creates a sense of knowledge and confusion in the film as the flashback we are experiencing is private knowledge.

"Taxi driver is based almost exclusively on restricted narration. This means that the flow of narrative information is filtered through a single character."

This type of narration is very interesting and is very rarely used another movie this is used in for example is Memento. These two movies use the narration of the film to their advantage by giving us one point of view of the story this means everything we are experiencing is from one man's point of view which means that the themes of the film are all expressed through one man's life and are all based on the experiences of one man. This type of narration shows that depending on what type of narration you decide to use decides how the director wants certain themes of the film to be expressed.

"In this opening shot, it is as if the camera is 'waiting' for someone (anyone) to approach and enter this door; whoever does so becomes the film's dominant character. This process of looking for a dominant character is common to the opening of most narrative films,"

This quote shows that a narrative of a film can be determined through one shot of a film because the restricted narrative of this film has been determined by the opening shot focusing on Robert De Niro. While he steps into his taxi This shot he is very good because it also states that for the narrative that Robert De Niro is alone by himself this does set the tone for the film.

"At specific moments in the film, the camera disengages itself from its dominant character, Roger Thornhill, in order to give the spectator some additional information about the narrative that Thornhill does not posses."-North by Northwest

This quotation tells the audience that not every piece of information in a film can be resided by a single character and depending on what the director wants the audience to know the director can strive away form the type of narration he was initially using. This quote shows that a lot of different types of narrative devices can be used to determine what the audience will see and what the audience will eventually end up understanding.

"This achieved by the narration shifting from one character to another, so that narrative information is conveyed to the spectator from many sources. This type of narration is commonly used in melodramas and television soap operas, in order to create a discrepancy in knowledge between the spectator and the characters."- Omniscient

This type of narration is very useful if the director is trying the get the audience to distance themselves from the characters and experience what the whole of the film world is like. This is also able to show