Level 2 Media Unit 1C: Narrative

Level 2 Media Unit 1C: Narrative

Linear narratives: Todorov’s Narrative Structure

Narratives in the media can be either linear or non linear.  A linear narrative quite literally follows a line, with a clear beginning, middle and end.  Increasingly though narratives are non linear, where the story moves around in time and space, using techniques such as flashback, flashforward, a range of concurrent narratives and narrators (characters who tell the story).

Many Hollywood films and TV dramas still follow a basic linear structure.  The theory we use to analyse these was originated by a media writer called Todorov.

Todorov (1973)’s model of narrative structure may be used across a variety of forms (fictional / non-fictional) and a range of media (print, TV, film, games etc..)

Todorov’s model, which is also known as the equilibrium / disequilibrium model, is as follows:

All stories are similar in structure, in that they share a movement across a series of three phases which relate to a “problem” or a disruption:

 

 

 

 

OR:

Equilibrium                          Dis-equilibrium                                                                                      New equilibrium

The type of narrative problem and its resolution will depend on the genre of the film. So in a crime story, the narrative problem is the solving of a crime.  There are twists or elaborations of characters as suspects. Eventually the problem will be resolved with the arrest or death of the lawbreaker.

Looking at the opening or climax of a film can establish what narrative problems are being established and resolved. Applying Todorov’s model to a whole film can often reveal a basic structure behind what appears to be a complicated story.

Genre example	Establishing problem	Elaboration / development	Complication	Action climax	Resolution
Romance	Will is doing his job by tricking people and ends up meeting a beautiful woman who catches his eye. The girl is an old friend and she brings up old memories, she gets with him and decides to leave at an important part of his life.	He leaves him and takes his money, however her plans wasn’t to leave her but she was forced to by one of wills enemies.	She tries to tell him but doesn’t succeed as they both far from each other plus the enemy has surveillance on them both but only the girl knows this		As tricksters they both get themselves out of surveillance sight and has a trick up their sleeve to get back together.
Horror	Police come asking questions about the mass murder. Maddison and her friend killed a boy and feels bad so they decide that they need to bring him back to life with their witch powers	Girl reacts wrong when police question her about the murders. Have to bring into a place where dead bodies are kept and loof for parts to add	Police and Fiona argues, then Fiona makes them drink spit and forget about the case they had going.
Action	Luc cage past catches up with him, he decides to protect an old friend (police officer) by doing this he brings unwanted attention to himself.	They escape from the people trying to kill the woman, luc cage and the police officer however the police officer has been shot and un able to walk making things harder for everyone helping him out	The officer has lies and secrets hidden from everyone apart from the main guy (villain) selling guns.		The police officer bleeds out from the shot wound and dies just before the other police officers get to him.
Sci Fi	Oliver comes back from an island after 5 five years of everyone thinking he is dead and he comes home to so many problems, he’s mum hiding he’s dad death from him and who he’s dad really was.	Oliver decides to be a vigilante and saves his city from evil and bad however he also faces his mum in a battle as he trys to save the city but his mum is evil	He faces varies problems over the city and him and his team take them down but the ost important thing is to hide their little secret from the public, family and the word.		His mum dies from one of oliver, the green arrow enemy slade Wilson. He kills his mum therefore adding anger to his mission and ends up killing slade furiously and finally saves his city

 

Level 2 Media Unit 1C: Narrative

Linear narratives: Todorov’s Narrative Structure

Narratives in the media can be either linear or non linear.  A linear narrative quite literally follows a line, with a clear beginning, middle and end.  Increasingly though narratives are non linear, where the story moves around in time and space, using techniques such as flashback, flashforward, a range of concurrent narratives and narrators (characters who tell the story).

Many Hollywood films and TV dramas still follow a basic linear structure.  The theory we use to analyse these was originated by a media writer called Todorov.

Todorov (1973)’s model of narrative structure may be used across a variety of forms (fictional / non-fictional) and a range of media (print, TV, film, games etc..)

Todorov’s model, which is also known as the equilibrium / disequilibrium model, is as follows:

All stories are similar in structure, in that they share a movement across a series of three phases which relate to a “problem” or a disruption:

 

 

 

 

OR:

Equilibrium                          Dis-equilibrium                                                                                      New equilibrium

The type of narrative problem and its resolution will depend on the genre of the film. So in a crime story, the narrative problem is the solving of a crime.  There are twists or elaborations of characters as suspects. Eventually the problem will be resolved with the arrest or death of the lawbreaker.

Looking at the opening or climax of a film can establish what narrative problems are being established and resolved. Applying Todorov’s model to a whole film can often reveal a basic structure behind what appears to be a complicated story.

Genre example	Establishing problem	Elaboration / development	Complication	Action climax	Resolution
Romance	Will is doing his job by tricking people and ends up meeting a beautiful woman who catches his eye. The girl is an old friend and she brings up old memories, she gets with him and decides to leave at an important part of his life.	He leaves him and takes his money, however her plans wasn’t to leave her but she was forced to by one of wills enemies.	She tries to tell him but doesn’t succeed as they both far from each other plus the enemy has surveillance on them both but only the girl knows this		As tricksters they both get themselves out of surveillance sight and has a trick up their sleeve to get back together.
Horror	Police come asking questions about the mass murder. Maddison and her friend killed a boy and feels bad so they decide that they need to bring him back to life with their witch powers	Girl reacts wrong when police question her about the murders. Have to bring into a place where dead bodies are kept and loof for parts to add	Police and Fiona argues, then Fiona makes them drink spit and forget about the case they had going.
Action	Luc cage past catches up with him, he decides to protect an old friend (police officer) by doing this he brings unwanted attention to himself.	They escape from the people trying to kill the woman, luc cage and the police officer however the police officer has been shot and un able to walk making things harder for everyone helping him out	The officer has lies and secrets hidden from everyone apart from the main guy (villain) selling guns.		The police officer bleeds out from the shot wound and dies just before the other police officers get to him.
Sci Fi	Oliver comes back from an island after 5 five years of everyone thinking he is dead and he comes home to so many problems, he’s mum hiding he’s dad death from him and who he’s dad really was.	Oliver decides to be a vigilante and saves his city from evil and bad however he also faces his mum in a battle as he trys to save the city but his mum is evil	He faces varies problems over the city and him and his team take them down but the ost important thing is to hide their little secret from the public, family and the word.		His mum dies from one of oliver, the green arrow enemy slade Wilson. He kills his mum therefore adding anger to his mission and ends up killing slade furiously and finally saves his city

 

Audience profiling!

Unit 1B – Audience Profiling

 

You are going to explore audience profiling and consumer behaviour through data or research results: profiles (consumer, reader, gamer, surfer, listener and viewer.)

 

Demographics

1. Age
2. Gender
3. Class
4. Race
5. Geographical Location

 

Task 1:

For your campaign, in groups create your own audience profile from your research (primary and secondary). Who will be your target audience?

 

Things to cover/complete	Completed and uploaded to your blog?
1.       Purpose of audience profiling for your campaign	Write a paragraph explaining why it is important to create an audience profile for your campaign.
2.       Using research data to develop a profile.	Link to your research.
3.       Use of demographics (gender, age socio-economic background, race, occupation, income, education).	11-19 boys and girls (both genders), all races, working class and lower class, people on benefits, low unskilled workers
4.       Patterns of consumer behaviour (genre choices, products consumed, impact of technology).	High use of social media, offensive language, branded clothing,
5.       Data (box office, sales figures, ratings, circulation, website hits).	Blank
6.       Presentation of audience research information.
7.       Interpretation of audience and product data from charts, pie charts, graphs, tables and reviews.

Legal and moral!

Code of conduct

Advertisements must contain nothing that could cause physical, mental, moral or social harm to persons under the age of 18.

Our ChildLine campaign video would include a phone number in case any young adults or parents are affected by the video. If anyone feels hurt by the video mentally than the number is there for help and take in complaints.

We are also editing the video in pre-production to dim the clips so in case if any of our viewers have epilepsy

Advertisements must not include material that is likely to condone or encourage behaviour that prejudices health or safety.

5.3 Advertisements must not condone or encourage practices that are detrimental to children's health.

5.3 states that if any harm to children’s health is intended in the campaign video then is would be banned. E.G a child smoking and loving it and the child encouraging it to his friends than this would be detrimental to the health of the health of our primary audience (Children). Our ChildLine campaign video wouldn’t include anything detrimental to the health of our viewers.

5.4 Advertisements must not condone or encourage bullying.

5.4 Our campaign video would include things such as depression for the primary audience to feel sympathy for the person being bullied, this would impact the viewers and somehow make them feel bad for bullying in the past or the future. Our campaign discourages bullying it sends many different messages to the audience, however the message are not bait.

5.5 Advertisements must not portray or represent children in a sexual way.

5.5 Our campaign has exposure of how it feels like to be In a relationships however has no sexual or inappropriate physical activity between the male and female. We see how it feels like to be in a relationship, meaning we can see how the good and bad in a relationship.

5.7 Advertisements must not take advantage of children's inexperience, credulity or sense of loyalty.

5.7 In our campaign we don’t include things that are too deep and hurtful for the viewers. For example if we have a video of a fight and the primary audience is for young teenagers, than they shouldn’t be too much exposure in the video as it could bring back memories for the person harming someone or even bring tears to the victims eye.

5.2 Advertisements must not condone, encourage or unreasonably feature behaviour that could be dangerous for children to emulate.

5.2 Our campaign video has nothing harmful or dangerous encouraged. It is kept simple and easy for the audience to understand however contains many small messages which will be understood if watched many times. It is irrelevant to any violence or danger.

 

Moodboard

Proposal

Child Line Campaign.

Audience – Our target audience are teenagers roughly 11- 17 and our secondary audience would be people around our primary audience such as teachers, parents, older siblings, classmates etc.

Purpose – Our main Purpose is to let teenagers know that whenever they have a problem and they feel like nobody is there, child line will be there for them whenever they need them so we want to encourage more teens and children to talk about their issues to someone they trust if not chi8ldline to help stop what they are going through and to prevent it from happening to others.

Platform – we want out campaign to be available on TV on channels mostly  mainstream channels where children, teens and adults would be watching and also on YouTube on the sides or before videos.

Brief/summary – Each teenager have a problem of their own problems and take it out on each other therefore everyone has a problem of their own. these problems consist of Bullying, Relationships, emotional abuse and domestic violence. we want to show a character called Chantelle who is in a domestic relationship and has a heated argument with her boyfriend and he puts her down emotionally and eventually calls child line for help. we don't want to use violence as our target audience are young viewers. other storylines are Jerome getting cyber bullied and Abdullah getting g pressured by gangs.

Length –  We aim for our campaign to be 1:00-1:30. we think this is enough time to show all we want to show without dragging out the story and making it long.

Images -  in our campaign we will include videos that we would have created ourselves. these videos may include Children crying. walking alone and captions

Logistics – we can use the TV studio, Performing& arts studio to film although we may not use these as we want our campaign video to be realistic showing the daily routines of the characters lives wh8ich would be based in places more like outside in corridors etc.

Resources – lights, camera, tripod - these resources are given to us and we may use other props.

Brainstorm

Childline video

Primary research

Audience research

Primary research:

Strengths:

• We have a strong plot which helps us with our campaigning idea
• The message (ChildLine)
• Lighting
• Location
• Props
• Sound
• Purpose

Weaknesses:

• No script for our dialogue
• No secured location
• Camera man

Opportunities:

Our campaign may go viral via social media meaning that our message will be known to teenagers which are our target audience and even adults and children being our secondary audience.  Our campaign can be turned into a published advert that would be hung up on buses, billboards, TV adverts.

Threats:

Other campaigns may have the same plot as our campaign meaning there will be some competition within the moving image media industry. There may be another campaign which already exist that has the same plot and it may seem like our team has acted upon copyright. We must also find a way not to offend the public.

Survey:

1. Do you know anyone who suffers from emotional abuse from a family member or friend? How old are they?
2. Have you witnessed any form of bullying?
3. What are your opinions on emotional abuse and why?
4. Have you been doing anything to help stop any form abuse?
5. Are there any other campaigns which allow abuse to be known?
6. Would you ever trust that ChildLine would be able to help you if you need help?
7. How old are you?
8. How old are your friends?
9. Are there any other campaigns that help with different types of abuse?
10. Would you call ChildLine if you needed help?