For my AS Coursework I constructed the opening of a film using the genre, Drama. As a group we were inspired by films like 'The Kings of Summer' and 'The Way Way Back'; both the films consists of a main character that wants to find themselves after losing something important in their life. In my group and I's film, Chester Wallace, our main character, being Chester, looses his best friend in a cycling accident (cycling being a grate passion of his). Despite of what happens Chester carries on with his dream to compete in the Tour De France. Though out the film we find more obstacles and situations, that may teenage boy find themselves in, in which he must tackle.
My group decided that our pre-title sequence should hook the audience into the narrative of the film in a number of ways. Roland Barthes discusses narrative in terms of a number of codes that are used to help to unravel the text for the viewer. one of these is his Enigma code - the purpose of this to keep the audience questioning what will happen and why is something happening. For example, in our film Chester goes to the beach to morn for his friend that has just died. However, in the film this is not stated until later in the film, there for making the audience more attached to the film, to find our what is happening. In our film opening we used an action code. This was when he sat on the beach and took off his shoes intern making the audience assume that Chester in going in the sea. Our symbolic code was capturing our main character staring our to see, this usually mean that the character is contemplating and morning over life. We used the semantic code to help emphasis with our character through the used of the sound track. In our beach sequence we used a slow paced acoustic peace of music that we thought indicated the depressed atmosphere that we wanted to achieve. We also used long takes to capture and uncomfortable atmosphere, due to the fact it is a semantic code of the Drama genre.
Vladimir Propp is theorist who discusses narrative purely in terms of character and actions. I found that his theory did not apply to my title sequence. This is because we do not have an antagonist, donor or helper in the opening of our film; we wanted set up the idea that Chester is not a very conventional hero because it is an independent quite quirky and different film, unlike the stereotypical hero that is a skilled fighter and there to help others. However, later in our film Chester will meet more people along the way that represents the donor, helper, etc.
Todorov's theories of narrative discuss in terms of the arc of a storyline. His theory split stories into five clear steps: equilibrium, disruption of equilibrium, the recognition of the disruption, the repair of it and then the new equilibrium. our title sequence plays with these codes in the following way. In our film there is and equilibrium when our protagonist is having fun cycling with his friends. Very early in the film the equilibrium is disrupted by the death of his best friend. Seeing as Chester witnessed the death, the recognition of the disruption of the equilibrium was instantly after the disruption. The rest of the film is about Chester trying to find himself and repair the destruction of the equilibrium. The equilibrium is regained when Chester has achieved his dreams of becoming a pro cyclist.
Finally Claude Levi-Strauss defines narrative as requiring the constant creation of conflict and opposition. He summarised this in terms of visual opposition (such as light versus dark) of conceptual (e.g.. Love versus hate control versus panic). We include a number of binary oppositions in our opening sequence, such as
life and death levi st
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