RESEARCH: PRESENTATIONAL TOOL FOR AUDIENCE RESEARCH

Use the presentational tool New Hive to create evidence of your audience research into one film that has similar genre codes to the one that you are planning. Include images, text, video, internet links, audio. Cover film classification, audience statistics, primary interviews. if there's space, links to other film websites of a similar genre. Sign up for New Hive HERE

Here is an example of audience research that I have created using New Hive, researching The Raven directed by James McTeigue (2012). You can see it HERE ON NEW HIVE

RESEARCH: PINTEREST MOOD BOARD

Use an electronic mood board to gather visual information as a planning tool. Try this one at Pinterest which I started today to show you. I can add websites as I find more, just like a pinboard. THIS IS YOUR SNOW DAY PREP! FOR TODAY'S LESSON, SCROLL DOWN!

RESEARCH: NOTES FROM THE EXAMINER'S REPORT

This is your lesson today, which you must follow whatever the weather, as you can do this from home!
Research and planning are worth 20% of the marks and should involve the collection of a considerable amount of evidence. Use what the examiner tells us in his report today to make your work good quality. In particular today, focus on the blue guidance below, so that if you are making a traditional thriller set in Victorian times, a satirical mockumentary or a comedy set in a restaurant, your research relates to your outcome. 
For example, as The Raven plans period clothes, they will select an image of (say) a character from Sherlock Holmes and place it next to a photo of their own costume choice. Restaurant / chef costumes, recce photos, internet photos inspire the restaurant comedy set.
Final Tap
In addition, they will show evidence of watching similar film openings /film scenes, identify genre codes and conventions, then state exactly what they plan to do that they've learned from their research.

• A blog post every other day for three months is a reasonable expectation for candidates (45 minimum)
• Varied posts including images, video and links; different ways of expression & communication
• Well signposted with clear headings (e.g. RESEARCH: SOUNDTRACK) & search engine
• Your individual contribution must be clear!
• Evidence of feedback
• Analytical rather than descriptive approach in genre research
• Link genre research to what YOU produce, so your research into similar products shapes your outcome
• Research is ongoing, so not all complete by the time your construction starts
• For audience research, use a triangulated approach: pick a film, analyse its classification, audience statistics and primary interviews (questionnaires not valued)
• evidence of location recces, planning of actors and costumes
• Explain all your decisions as you go!

RESEARCH: GENRE RESEARCH USING SCOOPIT!

In class today, we sign up for ScoopIt! which we use as a presentational tool gathering our research onto an electronic notice board. Each group creates one today, takes a screenshot, provides the link and explains how they used this new technology (ready for Evaluation question 6 What have I learned about new technologies?).
To view my ScoopIt! below CLICK HERE

Here is the ScoopIt! that I made today in class as an example for the group that is making a mockumentary

Documentary codes and conventions HERE ON EDUSITES for the group making a mockumentary

RESEARCH: RESTAURANT COMEDY GENRE

You need to show knowledge of films and television drama / shows and related texts that are set in restaurants or hotels, how comedy and drama are created in these texts and what type of characters feature in them.

• Fawlty Towers (UK BBC TV sitcom) first broadcast 1975. Twelve episodes were made (two series, each of six episodes)
• Hotel ABC  (US prime time TV drama) 1983 to 198
• The Grand (TV series) British television drama series first broadcast on ITV in 1997-1998. It was written by Russell T.Davies and set in a hotel in Manchester in the 1920s
• Harry's Kingdom (BBC TV comedy-drama) 1987 
• The Hotel Inspector observational documentary TV series Channel 5
  In each episode, a celebrated hotelier (Ruth Watson in series 1–3; Alex Polizzi in series 4-) visits a struggling British hotel and tries to turn its fortunes by giving advice and suggestions to the owner.
• The Restaurant Inspector Channel 5 TV series starring Fernando Peire, who advised struggling restaurants on how to achieve higher profits 2011-2012. 
• Cheers (US sitcom) 1982 to 1993, produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions, in association with Paramount Network TV for NBC.
  

You then need to show knowledge of popular TV chefs, cookery programmes and current trends and issues so find pictures of the following, watch them on YouTube then sum them up

• Jamie Oliver
• Heston Blumenthal
• Delia Smith
• Rick Stein
• Nigella Lawson
• Yotam Ottolenghi

Devise fun articles 
'You know you're a Hestonist if you...'

• Serve snail ice-cream, bacon and egg porridge and parsnip cereal
• Have lab equipment in your kitchen
• talk about molecular gastronomy
• Know what cooking sous-vide means
• Put whole oranges in your Christmas pudding 
•  

'You know you're a Delia-ite if you....'

• Serve bread and butter pudding
•  Are the queen of home cooking
• Like chicken basque and lemon meringue pie
•  

'You know you're a Jamie if you....'

• Like pukka food
• Bish bash bosh
• Cracking good nosh 

 

FILM NARRATIVE

This article appears in  Access Course, Access Film Studies, Film by James Mooney. 

ARTICLE HERE

Film Narrative

In our discussion of form, we said that a film’s form included both narrative and stylistic elements. In this session we are going to focus on the narrative elements.

Humans are ‘the storytelling animal’ – it is through stories that we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. When we speak about films we, more often than not, mean narrative films – films that tell a story. Because stories are all around us (in life, literature, other films) we will approach a narrative film with a great many existing expectations. Further expectations will be aroused as we actively participate in creation of the film’s form: the ending has the task of satisfying or cheating the expectations prompted by the film as a whole. This session will consider how narrative form engages the viewer in this dynamic activity.

What is Narrative?

A narrative is defined by David Bordwell as ‘a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space’. Although causality (and time and space) is central to narrative, films may also make use of different principles, such as parallelism, whereby two separate lines of action are intercut in order to allow us to compare and contrast. Network narratives (Pulp Fiction, Babel, Crash, etc) – which show parallel lines of action and conceal causal links – are also increasingly popular.

In order to make sense of narrative, it is first essential for us to clarify the distinction between story and plot.


Story and Plot

The plot of a film is the explicit presentation of narrative (story) events along with additional non-diegetic material (credits, score, etc.). In film, diegetic elements are things within the ‘film world’ and non-diegetic elements are things outwith that world.  [A good way to think about this is to determine whether the film’s characters have access to the elements in question.] The story, then, consists of all of the explicitly presented events as well as additional things which we infer on the basis of the plot.

Cause and Effect

Usually the agents of cause and effect are characters. Characters – who may be flat or well-rounded – have particular traits (attitudes, skills, habits, tastes, psychological drives, etc.) which play causal roles in the story action and, as such, have a particular narrative function. Although characters usually provide the causal impetus in a film this is not always the case: some films (e.g. disaster movies) are set in motion by particular events. As human beings, we naturally seek to connect events by way of cause and effect – we look for causal motivation. Sometimes apparently minor details can, in fact, play major causal roles. Filmmakers can choose when to suppress causes (detective films, etc.) and provoke curiosity or whether to withhold effects and provoke suspense. Indeed, some films can deny us knowledge of causes or effects even at the end (leading us to speculate).


Time

In attempting to construct a film’s story from its plot we attempt to establish the chronology, duration, and frequency of events. As such, time is one of the central components which the filmmaker has at his disposal. Unlike in the real world, time can be compressed, stretched, and can run both forwards and backwards.

Temporal order: film plots can present events out of story order by way of flashbacks or flashforwards. Often past and present are alternated and flashbacks may themselves be presented out of chronological order. Indeed, even entire narratives can be presented in reverse chronological order (e.g. Memento, Irreversible). This reordering of events, by way of the plot structure, can can add elements of surprise, suspense, and emphasis to a story.

Temporal Duration: there is a sometimes complex relationship between story duration, plot duration, and screen duration. At a more specific level, screen duration can expand (stretch relationship), contract (summary relationship), or remain faithful (real time) to story time. By far the most common of these is the summary relationship whereby a particular plot event (e.g a train journey lasting several hours) will be conveyed on screen in just a few minutes.

Temporal Frequency: story events are generally presented only once in the plot, however, sometimes story events will be repeated in the plot treatment. At times this repetition can provide us with additional/ conflicting information: for example, in Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950) the same event is shown from multiple perspectives. Repetition can also be employed to emphasise the significance of a particular event.


Space

Plot can lead us to infer other story spaces than those presented to us on screen. Screen space bears a similar relationship to plot space that screen duration does to plot duration. We will consider setting and screen space (and offscreen space) when we look at mise-en-scene and cinematography in our session on style.


Openings, Closings, and Patterns of Development

Films don’t just start and stop – they begin and end. A narrative’s use of causality, time, and space usually involves a change from an initial situation to a final situation. A film’s beginning (possibly medias res) provokes expectations and our search for causal motivations by setting-up a specific range of possible causes and effects. The portion of the plot that lays out important story events and character traits in the opening situation is called the exposition. Most patterns of development depend on how causes and effects create a change in a character’s situation. There is no set pattern of development but some common ones are the goal orientated and investigation plots. Time and space can also provide plot patterns. E.g. deadlines, flashbacks, single locales.

Films can combine various patterns of development – as a film trains the viewer in its particular form, viewer expectations become more and more precise. The middle portion of a film may cause suspense or surprise by delaying or cheating our expectations: a particularly fine example of the latter is From Dusk Till Dawn (Rodriguez, 1996). The ending of a film will typically seek to resolve causal issues that have run through the film by way of a climax, creating tension or suspense and formal resolution, which will result in emotional satisfaction. Some films, however, are intentionally anticlimactic. In such films we do not receive causal closure and are left uncertain about causes and effects. This particular form may encourage us to imagine for ourselves what happens next or to reflect upon other ways in which our expectations have been fulfilled.

Narration: the Flow of Story Information

Narration can be defined as ‘the moment-by-moment process that guides us in building the story out of the plot.’ It is the plot’s way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects: it may , as we have seen, withhold information for the sake of curiosity or suspense, or supply information to create expectation or suspense. The most important factors that enter into narration involve the range and depth of story information that the plot presents.

Range of Story Information: narration can be unrestricted (omniscient) or restricted and can achieve powerful effects by manipulating the range of story information. Unrestricted narration is when the viewer knows more than the character (but seldom everything), which helps build suspense. Restricted narration limits the viewer to what characters know (or less?), which helps create greater curiosity in the viewer and can lead to surprise. Films often utilise both restricted and unrestricted narration to a greater or lesser degree.

Depth of Story Information: narration can also manipulate the depth of our knowledge, depending on how deeply they delve into a character’s perceptual/ psychological states. Films which confine us only to knowledge of characters’ external behaviour are said to be objective. This can aid to withhold certain information from us – the character’s perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. When a plot gives us access to what characters see and hear (e.g. point-of-view shot) this gives us perceptual subjectivity. We might even hear a character’s mental thoughts or see images representing his thoughts, dreams, memories, etc.  When a plot plunges more deeply into the psychological states of a character this gives us what can be called mental subjectivity. Subjectivity can lead us to feel sympathy for a character, while access to inner thoughts can help us account for later behaviour or create expectations, etc.

Restricted narration need not mean greater subjectivity, nor does omniscience necessarily entail objectivity – range and depth of knowledge are independent variables. Most films insert subjective moments in an otherwise objective framework. Flashbacks may be motivated as mental subjectivity but once inside, events will typically be presented objectively and may even be unrestricted in conveying information that the character could never know (is this a flaw?). Some films effectively mix objectivity and subjectivity to create ambiguity.

The Narrator: narration may employ a narrator – some specific agent who purports to be telling us the story. A narrator may be a character narrator (popular from literature) or a noncharacter narrator (usually in documentary). Sometimes the identity of a narrator may be played upon. Both kinds of narrator may present different types of narration. For example, a noncharacter narrator need not be omniscient and might plumb subjective depths, while a character narrator may tell of events that he did not witness and relay little of his inner thoughts.

The Classical Hollywood Cinema

Classical Hollywood film depends on the assumption that action will spring primarily from individual characters as causal agents. Protagonists will have desires, which will set up goals, and counterforces (e.g. an antagonist) will oppose these goals, creating conflict.  These forces will have to be overcome in order to reach resolution. As cause and effect imply change, characters’ desires for something to be different are an important factor here. Time, in Hollywood cinema, is subordinate to the causal chain: what is shown; omitted, chronology; etc. will all be dependent on expressing the cause-effect chain most effectively. Hollywood narration tends to offer an objective framework against which levels of subjectivity are measured. It is generally fairly unrestricted – even when focusing on individual characters we will be party to things they do not see, hear, or know. Also, most Hollywood narratives provide closure: causal chains are completed, questions answered, mysteries solved, and loose ends tied up, almost always with a happy ending. However, as we will see, not all films follow Hollywood conventions – there are many examples of films that include superfluous information or deadtime, or that play with chronology to puzzle us, or leave endings loose, open, or ambiguous.

Summary

In looking at any narrative film, such questions as these may help in understanding its formal structures:

• Which story events are directly presented to us in the plot, and which must we assume or infer? Is there any nondiegetic material given in the plot?
• What is the earliest story event of which we learn? How does it relate to later events through a series of causes and effects?
• What is the temporal relationship of story events? Has temporal order, frequency, or duration been manipulated in the plot to affect our understanding of events?
• Does the closing reflect a clear-cut pattern of development that relates it to the opening? Do all narrative lines achieve closure, or are some left open?
• How does the narration present story information to us? Is it restricted to one or a few characters’ knowledge, or does it range freely among the characters in different spaces? Does it give us considerable depth of story information by exploring the characters’ mental states?
• How closely does the film follow the conventions of the classical Hollywood cinema? If it departs significantly from those conventions, what formal principle does it use instead?

RESEARCH: YOUR FILM OPENING

Work for Friday 14 December

Max, Ellie and Esme have just started to plan their film opening and are currently considering a comedy set in a restaurant. There is a lot of mileage in this and you needs to demonstrate on your blog that you first research the genre in general (comic drama as well as film openings), then plan your own project. There must be a clear connection between research and outcome.