SH: Experimental narrative approaches

Explain how you used conventional and/or experimental narrative approaches in one of your pieces.

•  In our film opening, ‘Masked’, we included a number of both conventional and unconventional narrative approaches. We studied various films in the thriller films which shared conflicting and similar narrative techniques, including ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Final Destination’. After studying the theories of Roland Barthes, Bordwell and Thompson and Pam Cook we have noted some of the conventional ways in which our narrative fits theses theories but also some slightly unique, unconventional ways in which we do this in our text. 
• Roland Barthes had a view that all pieces can be broken down into five narrative codes that weave and interlink to make the piece polysemic. These five narrative codes are: the Hermeneutic (enigma) code; the proairetic (action) code; the semantic (semic) code; the symbolic code and the cultural code. 
• One of these narrative codes which is prevalent in our text is the action code. An example of the action code in our piece is represented with a birds eye, close up shot of our murder reaching for a knife, as a result of this action the audience wonder what is likely to happen following this sinister action and whether it is as harmful as it is made out to be. This created some suspense for the reader as they have to question what happens next but do not find out immediately as the action is cut before completion. 
• As the shots of particular actions in our piece are cut away before the completion of the shot in many different occasions, it creates a lot of different examples of the action code as the viewer doesn’t actually see an action completed, for example when the murderer brings the knife down, it is cut away before we can fully establish what this character is doing. The use of action code in our text creates many different times which are suspenseful for the viewer. 
• The final shot of our opening sequence is a long, slow reveal with the camera tracking back to an establishing shot, this shot represents our main example of the enigma code. This unexplaining of the meaning of this shot leaves the audience asking questions of what happens to the character that is the murderer and will he get caught? The enigma code tends to draw audiences into continuing to view the piece as the questions they asked of the story/plot throughout the film will be answered, if conventional narrative codes are used, later in the film.
• Another code which is prominent in our piece is the symbolic code. This is quite an important code for our piece as the deeper structural meaning helps to interlink the good side of our character to the juxtaposing side of his murderous side. The innocent objects and actions in the opening sequence are made to seem much more inauspicious for example when the character is shown in his good light squeezing an orange it is then cut to a pan out of a pool of blood which portrays the orange juice in a much less innocent way because the audience know it is the same character and as they are positioned with him they judge these actions as one, which causes the audience to read deeper in to the meaning of the characters ‘innocent’ actions. This is however much more experimental in the way we have used this code when compared to the much more conventional use of the other narrative codes which were created by Barthes.  
• The second type of narrative codes we have looked at was first introduced by Bordwell and Thompson. The basis of their theory is that there can be a distinction between the story and the plot, there is a diegetic world of the narrative, there is a fibula and a syuzhet. The fabula is the chronological series of events or the story and the syuzhet is the techniques used to present the fabula in the narrative or the plot. Their theory suggested that the plot does not necessary adhere to the same timeline as the story tells. 
• Our fabula/story in chronological order is that our killer goes out and captures his victim and takes him to the garage, he then ties him up and kills him. After this he goes to bed and wakes up the following morning, goes to the fridge picks out ingredients, prepares a sandwich and then wraps it up, after this he makes orange juice and pours it into a glass.
• However our plot does not actually run parallel to this, as each section of the first half of the plot ie the murderous part is paired with a contrasting section from the second half, ‘good/innocent’ section. This is done through our editing and expansion of time which creates a false sense of time in the opening and also creates two lines of action which we intercut between. 
• The third theorist we studied was Pam Cook who believed every narrative structure should have: linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolve; a high degree of narrative closure; a fictional world that contains verisimilitude.
• We are unconventional in the idea that there should be some sort of enigma solve, as the film opening does not answer the questions of what intentions the killer has and why he has done what he has, it leaves these enigma questions to be answered later in the text. However we are conventional in the way that we created a fictional world which contained verisimilitude. We used many over the shoulder shots and pov shots which make the audience feel as though they are part of the drama and we position them with the killer, however at the end of the opening we pull them apart from this idea with the slow revealing shot which positions the audience outside the scene as if they have only just discovered it which is a more experimental use we adopted of this narrative code.