Narrative Theory

Understanding what narrative is, is very helpful and exploring narrative theory is defiantly essential to myself and structuring the short film correctly. Narrative is the art of story telling, which we all do every day. Its an important part of our lives. We see narrative when we watch film, TV or read books, it is the way different elements in a story are organised to make a meaningful story to the audience.
I am going to look at some narrative theories and then decide one or two that I want to include in my own short film.

Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov is a Bulgarian theorist, his theory is one of the most popularly used in my opinion. He suggests most narratives start with a state of equilibrium in which lie is normal and joyful. Then normality is disrupted by an outside force, which is fought against in order to return back to the normality being an equilibrium. This is used in a lot of films out there today. The model shown below shows his theory in a simpler way. Equilibrium ---> Disequilibrium ---> New Equilibrium

Roland Barthes
Another popular theory is by Roland Barthes, a French semiologist. He suggests that narrative works with five different codes which activate the reader to make sense of it. These five codes are:
Action - Resolution is produced through action such as a shoot out.
Enigma - Teases audience by presenting a puzzle or riddle to be solved. This delays the story to the en to finish it pleasurably. 
Symbolic - (Connotation)
Semic - (Denotation)
Cultural - audience can recognise as being a apart o a culture.

Claude Levi-Strauss
Claude Levi Strauss, a Social Anthropologist, studied myths of tribal cultures and also examined how stories reflect the values, beliefs and myths of a culture. These are usually expressed in binary oppositions, examples are below:
Americans vs. Native Americans
Good vs. Evil
East vs. West

Vladimir Propp
Furthermore, Vladimir Propp also had a narrative theory. He is a Russian critic and literary theorist and analyzed 100's of Russian fairytales in the 1920's. He proposed that it was possible to classify the characters and their actions into clearly defined roles and functions, some films fit Propp precisely. The hero (seeks something), the villain (opposes the hero), the donor ( helps the hero by providing the magic object), the dispatcher ( sends the hero on his way), the false hero (falsely assuming the role of hero), the helper (gives support to the hero), the princess (the reward for the hero, but also needs protection from the villain) and her father.




Todorov is one of the most used narrative theory's within them. I want to be less generic in this sense and choose a different narrative theory so be more unique and innovative. Researching these theorists have been very helpful however as I now know how to structure a short film correctly.

My Narrative Theory

After looking at the main narrative theory's, I have came to a conclusion that I am going to follow the traits of Claude Levi-Strauss's theory of binary oppositions. I am thinking of the start to be a happy, normal life showing flash backs of his great life before then binary opposition, it turns into a horrible catastrophe and we see how the loneliness has affected him mentally. However I do not want to just base my short film off one theory, moving on in once I know more of the script I will make a post about the changes.