Maeve's A2 Media Blog

LETS NOT PANIC  "When an asteroid threatens to hit New York, twenty-something Sadie embarks on a quest from Brooklyn to Manhatton to reunite with the man she loves - her therapist." The genre of this film is a comedy about a girl falling in love with her therapist and having him rescue her from a natural disaster. There isnt an extensive list of characters for this film which is a good thing as it means that the narrative is a lot easier to follow. The time setting this short film follows a split narrative that is based around future imagined events and present day. This short film begins with the character subject "Sadie" fantasising about her therapist however you don't actually see him until later in the narrative.  You are immediately greeted with a voiceover of Sadie talking about her fantasises and acting out what she is thinking so the viewer has visual and aural view. It then clips to her lying on a sofa in his office in different clothing and o...

NARRATIVE THEORY ( CONVENTIONS ) When untangling a narrative to find it's meaning, there are a series of codes and conventions that need to be considered. They include:  Genre Character Form Time We also are encouraged to use our of knowledge of these conventions to help us interpret the text. Time is something that we understand as a convention - that narratives do not take place in real time  but may telescope out (slow motion etc). "The time of the thing told and the time of the telling" - Christian Metz.  It is only because we are used to reading narratives from a very early age and are able to compare texts with others that we understand these conventions. A narrative is in it's most basic sense of a series of events however to construct a meaning from the narrative those events  must  be linked.  TIME As we watch a film we try to put the events in chronological order.  - Temporal Order- This is when the plot doesnt always show...

NARRATIVE THEORY (ANALYSIS) DECONSTRUCTING NARRATIVES - SEPERATING PLOT AND STORY The strict chronological order of events The order of the main characters finding out about these events - this shows the story - this shows plot construction                                                                                                        This sequence is the construction of all feature films        (Mrs. Doubtfire, The Sixth Sense) and keeps  the audience interested.   Identifying the Narrator who  is telling the story is a vital  question to be asked when analysing text.  They may be related to first person or third person  however POV's may ch...

Narrative Theory Propp's Fairy tale Characters Vladimir Propp was a R ussian critic who examined folk tales to see if there was any common structures that they shared. Propp discovered 8 main character roles that were common to the Folk tales and also discovered 31 narrative functions.  Suggested 8  most common characters in a narrative : The Hero The Villain (struggles against the hero) The Donor/Enabler (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object) The Helper (helps the hero on their quest The Princess (often sought for during the narrative) Her Father (rewards the hero) The False Hero (percieved as a good character in the beginning and emerges as evil) The dispatcher (send the hero off on their quest) T od orov's Equilibrium State of equilibrium Disruption of equilibrium A recognition of the disruption An attempt to repair the disruption A reinstatement of the equilibrium Binary Opposition Claude Levi Strauss ...