Narrative Theories

Propp, Todoror, Bathes and Levi- Strauss all have different theories about narratives and they are:

Levi- Strauss - Binary Opposites

That each genre of film and television all has an opposite, for a contrast to set the story; without this there would not be much of a story. 

Examples:

• Wilderness - Civilization
• Space - Earth
• Good - Evil
• Male - Female
• Hero - Villain

Barthes - Action & Enigma Codes

Barthes said that there are two ways to keep suspense in a film, the action and the enigma codes.

Action: Events on the screen which leave the audience thinking about what will happen next, they do not know what is following thus creating suspense. 

Enigma: Something which makes the audience question what is happening/going to happen.

Todorov - Narrative Structure

Todorov says there is a structure in five parts which is how all films are set out;

1.     Starts with an equilibrium (everything is normal)

2.     A disruption takes place

3.     The disruption is attempted to be solved, but fails.

4.     The disruption gets solved.

5.     The equilibrium is back to normal, but because of the previous events it has been changed.

Propp - Folk Tales & Character Types

Propp said that there were eight types of character which apply to a narrative:

1.      The villain/antagonist - Bad character

2.     The hero/protagonist  - Someone who saves the day. Does not always have to fit conventions such as male and brave.

3.      The donor - Character that provides hero with useful infomation ect.

4.      The helper - Aids the hero throughout

5.      The princess - The reward at the end, object of villains scheme. Not always a female.

6.     The father figure  - Provides support. Not always male.

7.      The dispatcher - Makes the hero start their quest.

8.      The false hero - Appears good but is actually an undercover bad person.

Game Show

For my game show it is a mixture of an assault courses and general knowledge questions, will be called Bamboozled and to win it you must get the fastest time in the course and the most amount of questions correct.
Production: This will be filmed in a studio for the quiz side of it, then in some country where health and safety is not so strict, e.g Argentina. It will be slightly like the Krypton Factor, but more entertaining and for a wider audience.

This could be converged by playing it online, making a video-game of it and playing it on such consoles as; wii, wii fit, xbox kinect, playstation move. Then you could play it online with others and compete, or play with others in your home.

Distribution & Marketing: This is will be distributed both online and on television to apply to a wider audience and so people who do not have TV (e.g students) can watch it too. Adverts will be shown on popular webistes such as You-Tube, Facebook and Hotmail. 


Technologies: The main technology that will be used for this are internet and television, as pretty much everybody in the UK at least owns one, or both. This way it could be spread around faster and easy, links could be given to people and they could play along at home.

The Male Gaze

In 1975 a feminist named Laura Mulvey published an essay entitled  “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”  - in it she states that it looks at women as being mere objects and nothing else. This is because a majority of things are aimed at heterosexual men and so to incite them to a product they use women, because sex sells. This however was in the 70s and since then things have changed slightly and now it can be used both ways, using the men to attract women to a product.  This was originally just based on films but is now used throughout other medias such as adverts, fine art and television. The woman in the advertistment becomes what is being sold rather than just premoting it, men look at it and like what they see, then women look at it and think if they use that product they too will look like that and think that the image they see is what a man wants, so becomes this normally false image of a women.


Here is a comic strip with some dinosaurs to clear things up.

Media Evaluation - Final Draft

Media evaluation

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