Developing the story

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Developing the story
SubjectContent
SUBJECT The media production THEME FORM
Formstructure, representation, depiction
Themeidea, intention
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From The Poetics of Artistotle

• We represent people as better/worse than they
  really are.
• The reasons for poetry imitation is
  planted from childhood instinct for harmony
  and rhythm
• most important is the structure of incidents.
• A whole that has a beginning, a middle, and an
  end.
• The unity of plot time, place, and
  action Practical Result economies of dialogue,
  characters, and scenes

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Dramatic Structure Rising Action

Major crisis Climax

Crisis Setback for protagonist
Denouement
Crisis or turning point
Exposition
Complication
Climax
Resolution
Functions also include Foreshadowing/Deflection
and Character Trait
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Encoding the Narrative Creating Identification
Protagonist The person with a problem Person
Sympathy Empathy Antipathy Problem
Antagonist Adversarial Forces person
v. person person v. nature person v.
self person v. institution person v.
society
EMOTIONAL CATHARSIS
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Nick Browne
Evidently, a spectator is several places at
once--with the fictional viewer, with the viewed,
and at the same time in a position to evaluate
and respond to claims of each. This fact
suggests that like the dreamer, the filmic
spectator is a plural subject in his/her
reading s/he is and is not him/herself.
From The spectator-in-the-text The rhetoric of
Stagecoach (1975)
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The Cinematic Narrator

• it is not that the viewer constructs but that
  s/he reconstructs the films narrativefrom the
  set of cues encoded in the film.
• ...in cinema, the implied author is the agent
  intrinisc to the story whose responsibility is
  the overall design--including the decision to
  communicate it through one or more narrators.
• ...for films, we would do well to distinguish
  between a presenter of the story, the narrator
  (who is a component of the discourse), and the
  inventor of both the story and the discourse
  (including the narrator).
• Seymour Chatman, The cinematic narrator

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Discourse and Text
TEXT
Real Author
Implied Author
Implied Reader
Narrator
Narratee
Real Reader
Sarah Kozloff, Narrative Theory
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The Cinematic Narrator The Apparatus
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Developing the story
SubjectContent
SUBJECT The media production THEME FORM
Formstructure, representation, depiction
Themeidea, intention