“Media texts rely on cultural experiences in order for audiences to easily make sense of narratives”. Explain how you used conventional and / or experimental narrative approaches in one of your production pieces.

Branigan has said that, “narrative is a way of organising...data into a cause and effect chain of events with a beginning, middle and end.” Indeed, narrative has probably existed for as long as human beings and it is likely even cavemen expected narratives to be woven around the images they painted in their caves.

In planning our short film for our Advanced Portfolio coursework, we knew we had approximately five minutes to weave a coherent narrative for the audience. This was very different to the Foundation Portfolio, which required just the opening two minutes of a film, meaning the narrative needed to arouse the audience’s interest without being rounded or complete.

We decided to use elements of both conventional and experimental narrative in our film Torn. We were aware of Todorov’s narrative theory that suggests every narrative begins with equilibrium, before there is disequilibrium and then a return to a new equilibrium at the end. The equilibrium at the start of our film is fairly disharmonious: our protagonist Sian is abused and neglected and has lost her mother; she is embarking on a journey to the coast and plans to commit suicide but at the beginning of the film this is unclear to the audience. The disequilibrium occurs when her journey is interrupted by a number of characters, some of whom seek to help her and others who antagonise her. This relates to Propp’s narrative theory. Propp studied traditional fairy tales and suggested that there are a number of set characters who function in every narrative. In our film, Sian is the hero but her actions are influenced by villains (Jake and Anna) and helpers (Carys and Mike), who all try to manipulate her along the way.

We decided to use some other conventional narrative techniques to engage our audience. The film uses retardation throughout – at the beginning, Sian says “I’ve done it” but it is unclear to the audience what she has done and where she is going. Slowly, her motivations are revealed to the audience through a serious of flash-backs, beginning with a scene in which her drunken father physically abuses her. It is not until the final scene that the audience finds out Sian’s mother was killed in a road accident due to Sian’s father’s drunk driving. This slow unravelling of the narrative helps keep the audience alert and interested in the story.

We used a fairly unusual narrative technique in that the characters Sian encounters on her journey are actually manifestations of her own mind. We do not make this clear to the audience until the characters disappear at the end and Sian says: “they were me and I was them.” This is a good example of a narrative twist and is designed to get the audience to think about what has happened in the rest of the film and hopefully watch again for a different perspective on the story. Unlike many Hollywood narratives, we respect the intelligence of our audience and leave them to interpret events in their own way – we do not signpost the story really obviously or

encourage the audience to interpret the narrative in a rigid way. The end of the story sees Sian say “where do I go now?” This ending is enigmatic but the audience is encouraged to see it as positive – Sian has beaten her demons and wherever she goes next will see her in a better place and able to get on with her life. We are aware that some audiences dislike films in which the narrative is not all tied up neatly at the end, preferring classical Hollywood narrative, but as we see our audience as intelligent critical thinkers, we think our ending will appeal to their sense of imagination.

Overall, we believe our narrative is successful in engaging the audience. We made sure our story contained causality – Sian’s treatment at the hands of her father combined with her mother’s death leads her to consider taking her own life. We also presented a variety of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ characters to move the narrative forward and ensure the audience remained interested.