Narrative

Narrative is the art of storytelling. 


When you sit down to watch a film, the narrative structure helps to define the story. It needs to be structured to help the viewer understand the message contained within, giving the film meaning throughout. 


However you need to keep in mind that the narrative structure only applies to the way in which the story is told and not the story itself... meaning the structure is the chronological stages or steps that progress from one to the other throughout the story.

Using Spiderman and Memento as examples of differences in film narrative, Spiderman is told chronologically, from A to Z - straight through. 


However in a film like Memento, the narrative is all jumbled up and irregular. Instead of going from A to Z, it chops and changes how far through the story it is, creating an effect that leaves the audience in as much of the dark as the main character of the film, about what's going on.


I have decided to use chronological narrative in my film as I have chosen to do a comedy, which is light-hearted and I feel that if I jumped the story all over the shot, then it could take away the humour of the film, if the audience had to concentrate too much on what time they were in.