Essay - Narrative

Apply the concept of Narrative to one piece of your coursework

For my year 12-course work I did a sport drama film opening about the world cup winners life George Cohen.

We thought about the production carefully and looked into Levi Strauss’s theory and wanted to apply this to our film opening to make it better. Our first opposite clearly was old verses new. We had George Cohen as an old man then it flashes back to him as a young football player. This binary opposite sets the scene as to what this film will be about and how it will go through this bright players life. We did this to set the nostalgia in our opening sequence. Also it was used to cement the narrative of the whole movie. We needed to grip the audience within the first few minutes and showing this opposite helped us achieve this.

Secondly we looked into Barthes theory of setting enigma. We needed to do this as it was a filming opening which need to entice there audience in the first few minutes so they will want to watch the rest of the movie. Setting the scene for the rest of film. We did this through implementing a lot of question in the opening sequence such as who is the old man and why does it play back to a football changing room? What does the football represent? We did this to get the narrative clear in the first sequence and also to make people want to watch the rest of the film.

Furthermore we also looked at Todorovs theory about equilibrium. We did not think we needed this in our opening, as it was a deep start. Our opening doesn’t have any disruption, as it was the only the start and we wanted to set the scene that it was a sad moment in this players life. The ball triggered a memory that made him play back over his life, which could be argued, as the disruption. He thought back to better times, which caused his mood to change. It wasn’t a major change however as the mood in the opening didn’t change dramatically.

Finally we looked at Propp’s theory about the different characters in movies ??????????

To conclude for our film opening to work we thought Levi Strauss’s theory was  most important to use as our whole story was going to be told by a old George Cohen and then played by younger and forever ageing football players. It showed the journey through his life and also many other opposite would be used through the film such as past and present, modern and olden times, colour and black and white.