Group Narrative - Miss Georgiou

The three theories that were proposed are by three men Vladmir Propp, Tzvetan Todorov and Aristotle. Vladmir propps was a soviet formalist. 


Vladmir Propps theory is that characters in the sequence provide a structure for the narrative. Mainly in fairy tales the characters set the narrative. 


The typical characters he found were:A Hero- A character that seeks something.The Villain- Who opposes or actively blocks the hero's quest.The Donor- Who provides an object with magical properties.The Dispatcher- Who sends the hero on his/her quest via the message.The False Hero- Who disrupts the hero's success by making false claims.The Helper- Who aids the hero.The Princess- Acts as a reward for the hero and the object of the villains plots.The Father- Who acts to reward the hero for his effort.

His theory of narrative seemed to be mainly based in a male orientated environment and some critics would often dismiss the theory when regarding to films. Some critics may argue that Propp's strict and restrictive order of events may be an false representation of the film. 

Tzvetan Todorov theory simplified the idea of narrative theory whilst also allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts with his theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium. A simplified list of his theory is this:
The fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium (everything normal, how it should be)
Then it would suffer some disruption (example of disequilibrium)
New equilibrium is produced at the end of the narrative.
There are five main stages that the narrative progresses through:
1. A state of equilibrium.
2. A disruption of that order by an event.
3. A recognition that the disorder has occurred.
4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption.
5. A return or restoration of a new equilibrium.

The narrative is driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium. However, the equilibrium attained at the end of the story is not identical to the initial equilibrium. Todorov argues that narrative involves a transformation. The characters or the situations are transformed through the progress of the disruption.
Finally Aristotle observed that all films have a beginning, middle and an end. He also believed in stages in film and they were:
Exposition - Setting a scene and introducing characters.
Development - situation develops, more characters introduced
Complication - An event takes place which would disturb the life of the characters.
Climax - Involves high amounts of suspense and decisive moment reached.
Resolution - Matters are resolved and satisfactory end is reached.

The purpose of a narrative is to create an engaging entertaining experience for the viewer that will grab the viewer attention some narratives are used for different purposes and used on different themes in particular ways. They contain various characters, dialogue and also descriptive language.
My narrative-
My narrative idea is three school children go back up to school (Media class) when the students enter the class and go on the computers all the computers will switch off and start fuzzing - there will be a high angle shot of this to make the students look smaller and vulnerable. When the door shuts I will use a close up shot to show the emotion of one of the student to show they are scared which will make the audience feel sorry for them. I will keep using high angle shots on one of the students more than the others to make him look more vulnerable and suggest to the audience he is in the most danger. I want to include a establishing shot in my thriller film to show the view from the camera to give a perspective of what will follow as there will be a man outside the window wearing a mask creating mystery. When the lights turn off and on it will create tension as you expect something to appear and scare the audience, but I want to add a false sense of security to my thriller film by not having anything appear so when the audience become calm after watching the lights turn off and on and nothing happens then I will scare them by having a hand covered in blood slam against the window. Also I want to include handheld camera movements for chase scenes to create jerky images which will produce a sense of urgency and chaos making the audience know they are in danger and running for their lives.

We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of my narrative and as a group we felt the advantages of mine is we can use conventions of a thriller easily by using a blonde female school victim however we felt as a group filming at school was too lazy and would not have looked good in our scene, we decided as a group filming outside of school in two separate locations would look better and give us more variety of shots.

Domenico martinis idea-
The idea for my opening sequence is to be set in an urban area unlike many other opening scenes mainly 
because otherwise I think it will just be a stereotypical thriller film and will be boring for the audience. The plot I was thinking of a house in the city at night, they're experiencing a power cut so the lights are out. The parents are asleep and one teenage boy is still awake watching TV on the sofa, he keeps hearing movement that he can't see. He ignores it and tries to sleep on the sofa. He hears a constant peculiar knocking so goes to the back door looks out in the garden and then he sees a young girl dressed in a white gown, then she screams and it ends… The conventions that i would aim to have within my clip would be shock and tension that will continue to build throughout the progression of the clip.
The advantages of this idea is that it had a good plot and defies the conventions of the thriller by having a male victim and a young girl as a killer this could make the narrative more scary and build more tension, as a group we also liked the idea of having paranormal activity where you can not see the killer when noises are being made this has been very popular in recent films such as Paranormal Activity however as group we felt we could not have got a variety of shots using this narrative and because another group had a relatively similar narrative we did not want to have something similar so decided not to follow this narrative

Robyn Tansleys idea-
My idea of the opening scene is that this young six year old girl gets bullied at school or at home as a result she tries to murder the person therefore she ends up in a mental home. A month later she escapes and comes back to haunt the family/school and ends up killing the whole year/family.

The advantages of filming Robyn's narrative is just like Domenicos idea as it defies the conventions of a thriller by having a young female being the killer this would help create more tension for the audience however when we discussed this narrative in our group we believed it would have been too hard to film and would have needed to include a lot of actors which we were not sure we could get.


We spoke as a group and after discussing all our narratives we decided not to follow any of our narratives as we came up with a complete new idea which we felt would follow the conventions of a thriller film but also give us a chance to use more variety of shots.

Our final narrative idea was to have a blonde female become possessed by a devil this follows the conventions of a thriller film as normally the victim is always a blonde female, our narrative would be the blonde female waking up and doing her normal routine so the audience would be unexpected to what will happen, then suddenly she drops a glass of water and walks from her home to a forest- here at the forest the audience will realise something bad is going to happen but we hope we have used a twist as instead of the usual chase scene through the forest, our victim does not get chased instead she walks up to a lake and jumps in killing herself; we done this hoping to create shock for the audience. Our narrative shall follow the theory of Aristotle because there is a sense of hidden identity within our clip which would mean that our thriller clip follows that specific proposed theory. Also it builds enigma amongst the audience as they're unknown about why and how the female girl became possessed and kills herself.