Ahmed

Khan

Narrative Theory
A Narrative is the way in which a story is told fictional or non fictional into a sequence. Our sequence is going to be a linear narrative with a single strand.

Valdimir Propp:
In 1920s the Russian critic looked over 100 fairytales. He wrote book called the morphology and recommended that you can allocate the characters actions to decide their roles. He identified 8 character roles and highlights the connections between different stories. Propps Character Roles are: The Hero (who seeks something) The Villain (who disputes against the hero) The Donor (who aids the Hero by giving him a magic object) The Dispatcher (Sends the Hero on his way) The False Hero (Crookedly assumes the role of being the Hero) The Helper (who helps the hero) The Princess (The bounty for the Hero, however also seeks refugee from the villain) Her Father In our film we dont use Propps theory mainly due to the fact that theres only three characters. We only have the Villain haunting the innocent boy and him trying to escape. There not much in the teachers roles apart from keeping the student behind for detention this leads to him being haunted.

Tzevetan Todorov:
Is a Bulgarian literary theorist, who recommended that quite frequently narratives start with a state of equilibrium where life is normal and the protagonist pleased.

However this state is then disrupted by an external force. This external force needs to be fought to establish the state of equilibrium and maintain it. This technique will be applied to our opening sequence as Ahmed the teenager coming out of detention getting on with his everyday life, however will fall to be a victim of the supernatural being. Equilibrium ------------ Disequilibrium ------------ New Equilibrium Equilibrium: Ahmed is getting on with his everyday life. Disequilibrium: The external force which is the supernatural girl haunts him. Ahmed is consumed by the external force and doesnt manage to escape. However in many other horror films its shown that someone survives and that would be a new Equilibrium.

Roland Barthes:
Is a French semiologist who recommended that narrative functions with five different codes which energizes the reader to make sense of it. Barthes Codes Are: Action - A narrative device by which a decision is generated through action for example a shootout. Enigma - A narrative device aggravates the audience by showing a puzzle or riddle to be answered. Its functions to set back the storys ending happily. Symbolic - (connotation) Semic - (denotation) Cultural - A narrative device which the audience can identify being part of a culture.

We havent applied any of Barthes codes other than a touch of Enigma as the audience throughout the opening scene want to know about the girl. As in the beginning you only see her a few times until the end.

Claude Levi-Strauss:
A social Anthropologist who studied myths of tribal cultures. Who analysed how stories without thinking reflect the values, beliefs and myths of culture.

These are usually signified in the form of Binary oppositions. His research has been adjusted to different situations or conditions by the media theorists to show fundamental themes and symbolic oppositions in media. Binary Oppositions are conflicts between two qualities or terms for example: Weak and Strong or Good and Evil

Binary oppositions will be also applied to our opening sqeuence which shows Ahmed being the weak, either good or evil but mainly good and the supernatural being strong and evil which uses its supernatural powers to dominate Ahmed and haunts. Using Narrative to build up suspense: A restricted narrative can be used to amaze the audience for example, in our opening sequence when Ahmed is running after the girl on the tri cycle he deosnt know was waiting for him round the corner, neither does the audience. However the other half of restricted narrative can be used to build up more suspense and the audience can predict what might be waiting round the corner, which the character will have no clue of.