Lo3 - narrative theory.

• NARRATIVE vs STORY:

- A story is a plot / a sequence of events. 

- A narrative has techniques used to tell a story, such as diegetic sound, costumes, colours, it's how the story is structured.

• ANALYSIS OF MEDIA PRODUCT.

The main story / plot within the trailer of 'the woman in black' I have been analysing is that the old house suddenly brings evil to the town and characters after seeming empty and calm, the wider meanings within the trailer are ones such as good vs evil, this is a main ideology of western culture, the trailer also consists of enigma as the town are being attacked by 'the woman in black' and Daniel Radcliffe is relied on to fix this problem, Tzvetan Todorov's theory applies to the trailer as the trailer starts off at a stable point of equilibrium, it the get's disrupted by a unfortunate events such as house's burning and children crying, the force that creates this disequilibrium is 'the woman in black', action is taken upon this disruption by main character Daniel Radcliffe, however the new point of stable equilibrium is not shown after within the trailer (but it is in the film), binary opposition such as good vs evil is pirated within the film, the trailer costs of stereotypical stock characters such as an antagonist, protagonist and sidekick, enigma codes are used within the trailer as we hear a strange noise and then Daniel Radcliffe lights a candle which is denoted by an insert shot, this use of insert shot connotes that something scary / enigma is about to occur as he's making the room lighter which will reveal somthing scary as this is conventional to horror films. 

• EXAM QUESTIONS:

- analyse how the mise-en-scene is used to create stereotypes in a media product you have studied.(12)

- analyse the concepts of "narrative" in a media product you have studied. (12)

• KEY WORDS:

Mediation - the way the media carefully selects production techniques to create specific meaning

Ideology - the values and belief system of a wider culture.

• THEORIES: 

Tim'o Sullivan et al. (1998) - All media texts tell us some kind of story; through careful mediation, media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves (as a culture)- these are ideologies. 

Pam Cook (1985) - the standard Hollywood structure should have:

-"linearity of chase and effect within overall trajectory of enigma resolution".

- A high degree of narrative closure.

- A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal     coherence.

Tzvetan Todorov (1977) - 

stage 1 - a point of stable equilibrium. 

stage 2 - the stability is disrupted, creating disequilibrium.

stage 3 - action directed against the disruption.

stage 4 - restoration of a state of new equilibrium.

Claude Levi-strauss (1958)

Binary opposites - good vs evil. 

Vladimir Propp (1928) - all narrative feature stock characters and that audiences understand stories because of such features (antagonists, protagonist, sidekick, princess, underdog).

Roland Barthes (1977) - narrative codes
Enigma codes work to keep up setting problems or puzzles for the audience
Action codes work to inform the audience in terms of what is happening in the next shot / scene.