Story Elements

As you know, there are two interrelated strands to the construction of a fictional movie narrative, 'story elements' and 'production elements'. This post is dedicated to the former.

What is a narrative?

Before you begin analysing the components of narrative, it's important to understand what narrative is. The easiest way to describe it is as a series of events that happen in a chronological order. For instance, 'A girl meets a boy, they fall in love and get married'. Right there, you could be describing any number of stories, from 'Cinderella' to 'Pretty Woman'. What makes a story interesting - that is, what makes it unique - is the way that 'story elements' are used to structure the story and make the audience care about what's happening. Those story elements include 'narrative possibilities', 'character', 'setting', 'storylines', 'structuring of time', 'cause and effect', 'point of view' and 'narrative progression'.

Narrative Possibilities:

'Narrative possibilities' refer to the possibilities - the things that might happen - with regard to the characters, stories, issues and/or ideas established in the opening sequence. The opening sequence of 'The Player', (below), introduces the viewer to the major character, a studio producer, and the film's locatoin, the studio, as well as the harried tone of the film, as a roving camera captures numerous conversations around the lot in one sweeping shot, the phone constantly ringing and being answered in the background. As well as 'orienting' the viewer, however, this sequence does what all good sequences should do: it makes the viewer ask questions. 'Who is this producer?' 'How am I meant to feel about him?' 'Will he make any of the projects that are being pitched to him?' 'How does the film's title, 'The Player', relate to the character I'm watching?' Only time will tell.

Character:

It goes without saying that characters are a major part of a good story. It's the characters that the audience loves or loathes. It's their shoes that we, as audience members, are asked to walk in. So what makes a character interesting? To put it simply, an interesting character is one that's multi-dimensional (i.e. a mixture of light and shade, organised and disorganised, fair-minded and judgemental). In other words, it's somebody just like us. Generally, a character can be understood by a combinatoin of how they look, how they act, and how they are perceived by others. It is important to be able to discuss the establishment and development of characters throughout the narrative, as well as their relationship to one another. The scene that follows is from the beginning of the television show 'Breaking Bad'; it paints a deft portrait of a multi-dimensional character, Walt, once a nobel-prize winning chemist, now a high school chemistry teacher with terminal lung cancer who has decided to begin dealing drugs in order to support his family once he's gone:

Setting:

'Setting' refers both to when and where a story takes place, and is often essential to the narrative. The following clip is from the movie 'The Edge', and is set in the wilderness. In the movie, it's the fact that the main characters (played by Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins) are stuck in the wilderness that forces them to reveal their true colours, including previously undisclosed feelings about each other.

Storylines:

Of course, when looking at narrative, it is essential to understand the way that different storylines work to engage the audience. The terms that you'll need to understand are 'plot' and 'subplot'. Remember the example of the story we used earlier, of the girl meeting the boy, falling in love and getting married? We could use a subplot to give the narrative an extra dimension. In Shakespeare's day, that often meant adding a comedic or magical element. In our case, we might introduce the subplot that the man the girl has fallen in love with has been married before and already has a son. This provides interest for the viewer because it raises a number of questions about how the girl (from the plot) will relate with her love interest's child (from the subplot). It's sounding more interesting already. Now introduce one or two more subplots and you have a really complex story.

Structuring of time:

Structuring of time refers to how the events are ordered in the film. How the time in a narrative film is structured can vary. Some films just have a beginning, middle and end in that order (chronological order) and some can actually start and the end and flash back to the beginning. How the film is structured and the order that events are revealed is important in engaging an audience. You wouldn’t want the murderer revealed at the beginning of a crime film would you? Linear narratives occur in order with a beginning, middle and end. Non-linear narratives are ‘all over the place’. The story is not presented in the order it occurred. Quentin Tarantino’s films are good examples of non-linear structures.

Structuring of time is usually controlled by the editing process to create:
A flash forward
A flashback
Compression of time
Expansion of time
Repeats
Parallel action

In 'Nick of Time' (1995), we see the most extreme form of linear narrative - a story in which one minute of screen time is equal to one minute of real time - a technique later made famous by the show '24':

In 'Pulp Fiction' (1997), Quentin Tarrantino plays with the audience's expectations, introducing them to a host of characters and showing them a series of events with very few clues of what order the various subplots actually took place:

Cause and effect:

Cause and effect is simply what propels the story. That something happened because of something else. For example, the main character is feeling depressed because his girlfriend left him. (Girlfriend left – cause, depression – effect). His friend feels sorry for him so invites him out for dinner (friend feels sorry – cause, invites for dinner – effect). They go for dinner and eat Indian. The character gets a stomach ache. (Ate Indian food – cause, stomach ache – effect). He goes to hospital. (Stomach ache – cause, goes to hospital – effect). He meets a new love interest.
So a whole lot of events have taken our character from a depressed break up to a new love.

'Magnolia' (1997) begins with three stories that rely upon a strange and convoluted series of cause and effect:

Point of View:
Usually we see the story from an objective point of view where we witness the events as a spectator. Sometimes we see events from the point of view of the character and see what they would see through the shot selection. When analysing this elements we need to ask:

From whose point of view is the narrative presented?
What are the effects of this on the story and character development and audience engagement?

In 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' (1998), sound and vision combine to make the audience share the protagonist's point of view when risking half a million dollars on one hand of poker:

Narrative Progression:
Similar to the opening sequence we also look at the closing sequence and how the film possibilities have been resolved. We need to examine:

Have the possibilities been fulfilled?
Were the conflicts, issues etc resolved?
Do the closing and opening relate to each other and if so how?

Most films leave us with a happy ending but sometimes things are left unresolved and up to the audience’s imagination.

There is no example for this story element. We're abiding by a strict 'no spoiler' policy here. To see narrative progression at work, watch any film or TV show and, when you get to the end, ask yourself the three questions above.

Production Elements

Production elements are the technical aspects of filmmaking. Without these, the story wouldn't be told in an effective way. Just try watching a film with poor production values (that means bad acting, lighting, sound, etc). It's pretty tough going and, even if the script (story) is good, it's usually pretty tedious to watch. This is because the writer's intention has not been realised by the director - the production elements have undermined the story elements.

On the flip-side of this, have you ever watched a film and walked away saying, 'Man, that story was terrible, but the special effects were great!' These days, a criticism levelled at Hollywood is that it tends to favour production elements, such as special effects, over story elements. Whether or not you believe this is true, when a film's production and story elements combine, they make a winning combination. A great example of this would be 'Terminator 2', which is still regarded as a classic action movie and loved by fans of all ages, despite the fact that it's more than 15 years old.

So which production elements do you need to know, and what do you need to know about them? Let's start with the one you will be most exposed to as a film goer - camera.

A camera is more than a machine that funnels light onto a recording device. On set, it's the stand-in for the viewer's eye. The angle of the camera, the way it moves, its focal length and distance from the subject, combine to create a visual experience for the viewer that goes beyond mere words on a page. Consider the following scene from 'Man on Fire'. It is incredibly intricate, as the camera performs a range of visual tricks that are designed to unsettle the viewer while honing their attention on particular details in the scene. See how many of the camera elements listed above you can spot in the scene, and think about why the movie's director (Tony Scott) and the cinematographer chose to present the action in this way.



By contrast, check out this scene from 'The Third Man' (directed by Orson Welles). Perhaps the most striking difference is the tiny number of shots for such a long scene (by today's standards, that is). This creates a visually striking but slower-paced scene than that of 'Man on Fire':



Intricately tied to the camera is another production element, 'visual composition'. Sometimes referred to as 'mis en scene' - from the French term for 'putting on stage' - visual composition encompasses the framing and angle of a shot as well as the positioning of everything (and everyone) in front of the camera. Of particular importance is the relationship between the people, the camera and the things in the frame, for example whether they are placed in the foreground or background, and how big they appear in relation to one another. Check out how much you can tell about the family who own the house in the next scene, from 'American Beauty' (Sam Mendes, 1999), through the visual composition. (Feel free to turn the volume off if it makes it easier to concentrate on the framing, characer position, costumes and props):



Another key to understanding the how the visuals of a film are constructed is to look at the lighting. This can be naturalistic (replicating natural lighting such as the sun) or expressionistic (designed to convey a particular mood or meaning to the viewer). In the following clip from 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' (1985), lighting is used to draw a clear distinction between two very different characters. The first character is lit with a naturalistic, high-key (essentially that means bright) light, that makes him almost blend in with the painting he's looking at; by contrast, his best friend Bueller and Bueller's girlfriend are lit, from behind, by a cool blue glow that creates a sense of romance:



Lighting is, of course, a great way to create suspense. In this famous scene from the original 'Cat People', the play of shadows creates a chill that terrified audiences at the time:



In all of the clips you've seen so far, acting has created a sense of character. But what is acting exactly? It's not just the words that somebody says. It's also the non-verbal cues they give, in their facial expressions and body language. It might be easy for you to remember as action, reaction and interaction. In the following scene from 'Taxi Driver' (one of the most famous scenes of all time), you can see how the very talented Robert De Niro conveys a huge amount about his character in only a few words.

When considering the performance of an actor, it's important remember that actors are cast not only for their ability to play a character, but because they can draw a crowd (from a specific demographic) and because their audience has a certain expectation about the sort of character they will play. Robert De Niro is the perfect example: having worked with Martin Scorsese (the director of 'Taxi Driver') on more than ten films, he is often thought of as a 'gangster' type, and it has sometimes been hard for him to find projects that allow him to express the other facets of his acting persona. In 2008, the movie 'Righteous Kill' played upon De Niro's 'bad guy' reputation by having him begin the film by saying that he was the killer (knowing that the audience would take this at face value). On the other hand, for the movie 'L.A. Confidential', the director chose two actors who would be virtually unkonwn to American audiences at the time (Guy Pearce and Russel Crowe), feeling the lack of expectations about the sorts of roles they usually played would heighten the mystery at the heart of the film.

As well as visuals, most movies (since the silent film era) have relied on sound in order to convey meaning and/or mood to the viewer. It is sometimes intrusive, sometimes barely registered by the viewer, but it's always there. Even the use of silence is, today, a choice made by the director in consultation with a sound engineer. In movies, sound is made up of three parts: dialogue, music and sound effects. Listen to the way each is used in the following scene from 'Blade Runner' (Ridley Scott, 1982) in order to give the viewer an immediate sense of the future noir world in which they find themselves:



So what about tying it all together? Whose job is that? That mammoth task is left up to the editor (and other post-production staff) who will take visual and sound elements and form a cohesive and engaging film based upon the director's instructions. During the editing process, choices will be made about which shots to use and which to leave on the 'cutting room floor', controllling the pace and rhythm of the final product; filters and special effects may be added to the footage to heighten its impact or create meaning; and the sound will be mixed to combine dialogue, music and sound effects. As the final stage in the filmmaking process, editing is so crucial that directors like Robert Rodriguez ('Sin City' and 'From Dusk Til Dawn') insist on doing it themselves.

Below, I have included the opening scene from 'Donnie Darko', which combines all the production elements outlined in this post to create a stunning scene. See if you can see how they work in conjunction to convey the director's vision:

An analysis of story and production elements and their effect on audience - coming soon