Narration and Essay Thoughts

Despite the numerous kinds of genre, theme, and story telling methods found in all media texts, it seems that there are several basic foundations of story telling that can be supposedly applied to any form of narration or story. When trying to explain something in it’s entirety that can be applied to every form of media story-telling mechanism, I find the more general summaries to be the ones that apply to more texts; the 8 character archetypes defined by prop as those which can be applied to every story are not always true. It’s simple enough applying the generic ‘Princess and her father, the hero, the villain, etc’ to a film like superman, where the characters are few, and clearly defined, but with a film in which the characters have more depth, and can change roles throughout the course of the story, it’s difficult to clearly define the characters. Eg, if a character remains a hero throughout the entire film, but turns evil or unto another role, how could the character be categorized as one or the other? Throughout the course of a film, characters that were firmly set in the audiences head become altered and may take place under a different archetype, or one that isn’t even on the list of 8. I believe that this is a too specific approach to dissecting narrative methods

Levi-Strauss describes narrative as rivalry between ‘two binary oppositions’. This is very true for movies such as westerns in which the cowboys fight the Indians and I was surprised at just how much this can actually be applied to. It could come down to a simple ‘good vs evil’ or even ‘evil vs evil’. I actually struggle to think of any film in which a character doesn’t have to overcome an opposite challenge or make their way through another character.

When speaking of interactivity mixed with story telling, the first thing that came to mind was the game ‘Heavy Rain’. I think this is an excellent example, as not only is user input needed to advance the story, but it even goes as far as to let the audience alter the story, kill off characters, and change the entire outcome, whether it was intentional or not. There is a lot to focus on with regards to the game itself, but what intrigues me is how the player makes the story unfold through direct decisions, and how it delivers a sense of epiphany even after multiple play-throughs.

This short video demonstrates how more than one route can be taken in many aspcts of the game to overcome a certain scenario.

The game itself is almost like a film, with a lot of interchanging between playing as different characters at different times. As put by Espen Aarseth, It’s a highly ergodic experience. Direct thought and input is required to make the story progress. With regards to agency, there is definitely a sense of power in controlling the outcome, but it sometimes is woven in so tightly that the player doesn’t notice. For instance there may be two or more different ways to reach a certain area or location, and you will experience new outcomes and parts of the story that would have ordinarily been missed by taking another route. However, whilst this may appear to be a negative example of Tmesis, it actually heightens the experience; by increasing the weight of the decisions a play makes, it just gives the player a feeling of even more control. It’s more satisfying to look out for and find opportunities that were previously missed. This is where all the goodness of a roll along film comes in, there is no aporia. There are no instances in which the player can get stuck, almost the entire game is a timed event and if a character dies, they are removed from the game and the story continues. If all of the characters die, the game is wrapped up with an ending and the player is free to start again with a whole new experience. I really enjoyed the fact that the game keeps pushing the story along. Having played this myself it was a near 10 hour long thriller movie that worked around every decision I made, and every future decision I made resulted in a different outcome. The epiphany came into play when I played it a second time, and discovered a lot of areas and parts of the story that were missed the first time. Like watching a movie for a second time, all of the little easter eggs that were missed the first time around, I caught on the second go. I would very much like to include similar replay tactics with my own animation work.

Being a 2-d animator, there isn’t a high chance that I will be making a game of this sort, but I can still include artefacts and parts of the story scattered throughout the film that would involved watching the movie a second time to fully appreciate it, such as in this game. It’s a good feeling when your ‘efforts’ pay off; when revisiting a film you can appreciate and understand the little golden nuggets than were previously missed and forgotten.

Such is the feeling when re-viewing ‘Shutter Island’, a film in which a detective visits a mental clinic after being called out to investigate an escaped patient. Again without wishing to spoil the ending Throughout the entire film, there are constant little clues and indications being dropped as to the outcome of the film, and so carefully, that it takes a second viewing to catch a lot of them.

For some reason, it gave me a sense of pride at having picked out these goodies, and I would like to give the audience of any of my future work the same feeling of epiphany as I had with Shutter Island and Heavy Rain.

Also, with regards to the essay that needs to be written on one of a chosen list of subjects, I really feel that the one entitled: 'What is narrative and how might an understanding of it help in the appreciation of animated films, computer games, and/or the use of visual effects?', would be the most suitable to take on. I find that even telling a story veen with just one image is a massive part of what I do and what I hope to elaborate on in the future.Personally, it's the most important part of animation to me. It's what keeps the audience glued to their seat for a number of hours or just a matter of minutes. Without a decent story, you just have a slideshow of images that nobody will be interested in. I'll begin looking into other animations, games, and theorists in preperation for this assessment.