1B - Narrative

Apply the concept of narrative to one of your media production.

A narrative is the way in which a story is told in both fictional and non- fictional media texts, which Todorov described as always having a disruption throughout, "disruption is always figured literally- as a physical force." In the 'teen drama' short film opening my group and I created, called 'Untamed', a teenage girl comes home drunk from a party that night past her curfew, to find her mother waiting for her to come back. The conflict between the young girl and her mother leads her to packing her things and running away from home.
We decided to dismiss Todorov's 'equilibrium theory' as we chose for the plot line to have a problem in it from the start, making the main conflict between the daughter, Aubrey, and the mother, Carol, the first disruption of the equilibrium. This is because we wanted to go down the route of a more 'indie' film structure as well as creating interest for the audience so they were engaged in the plotline and wanted to know what would happen next. By doing this it also makes the narrative less predictable which also creates some enigma for the audience. 

We did however, use Levi Strauss' theory of 'binary oppositions' which is translated through the mother and daughter. We show different forms or binary oppositions through these two characters, such as: good vs. evil, drunk vs. sober, young vs. old, indoor vs. outdoor and conforming vs. rebellion. The older mother represents the sensible, strict, safe and conforming women which are traditionally thought of when connected with the word 'mother', whereas Aubrey is the rebellious, drunk, daring young daughter who doesn't like to play by her mother's rules which is often portrayed of teenagers in the media.
In the film opening we also subverted Propp's theory of 'stock characters' which consists of 31 traditional characters which are reused and represented in every narrative one way or another, by making the 'baddie' character of Aubrey a female, as females are usually the good, conforming characters in the narrative. We also subverted the traditional roles of parenting by making the mother the strict parent who is in charge of telling the children off and controlling them, instead of the traditional father who is not even seen in the sequence. We did this to also make the film opening slightly different as only female characters are seen thus far which I believe is quite rare for even modern films.
We also follow Barthes theory of 'Enigma Codes' which makkes the audience question anything/ everyone in the film through the first and last scenes of the film. Within the first 20 seconds where the titles are shown, the main character, Aubrey is stumbling home drinking her bottle of alcohol with music in the background which makes the audience wonder who she is, how old she is and whys she is drinking on the streets at night on her own. This enigma also carried on through until the last scene of the sequence as Aubrey runs away from home and she is filmed running through the streets at night with her rucksack and the last shot is a man in the distance walkinf behind her before the screen goes black and the title of 'Untamed' appears on the screen. We did this to create dramatic impact on the audience and to make them engaged in the narrative and want to know what happens next.
In conclusion we created the narrative of our film opening by using and subverting ideas of multiple theorists to create interest and drama, in an effort to create a realistic sequence to keep our audience entertained.