Group Narrative

Group Narrative

In my group is Charlie Stewart and Jessica Day.

Idea 1 - The opening sequence for this narrative would be of the friends walking through the forest, when their friend goes missing and getting the text from the antagonist, the focus would go back and forth from the characters and pictures of the chalk circles and weapons, that could possibly be used. The credits would be written in text font like the phone to show some of the narrative about the antagonist sending them messages. The rules could be being read out so that the audience are aware straight away that there is some sort of game involved.

Advantages - It builds up up suspense which is conventional.
Disadvantages: It's brief and confusing.

Idea 2 -  For my thriller film I am going to be base it around a wife who is in a room on her own. The audience see her facial expressions seem depressed at the beginning and she hears noises outside of the room that she is in. The woman opens the door to investigate the noise but doesn't see anything so as she sits back down she sees a silhouette of someone standing there. Then it cuts to black as he walks in the door, we hear struggling noises and then finally silence. Then we see a silhouette walk out then the camera pans to the woman's desk and we see blood all over it.

Advantages - Good use of conventional thriller elements. Creates and enigma.
Disadvantages - Hardest to make.

Idea 3 -Boy and a girl are having a lunch picnic. Girl comments on how glad she is that the boy forgave her for leaving him when he was depressed. Boy looks away and we see a menacing look on his face. Cut to flashback of the boy walking to the edge of the platform at a train station, about to jump but deciding not to at the last minute and we see the train whiz by. Next shot is of the boy talking to a psychiatrist and we hear that the boy often has "dark thoughts" since his mother was driven to suicide by his father, he also mentions how betrayed he felt when his girlfriend left. Cut back to the present, the boy's girlfriend asks him to pass her the apple juice. Then we see the hamper and as the boy moves the apple juice we see a knife. Boy grabs it, screen fades to black, girl screams. The rest of the film would be about the boy seeking revenge on the people he believes to have caused him harm, mentally or physically with his father being his final target . There would be meetings with the psychiatrist throughout.

Advantages: Easy to produce. Good opening that doesn't give away to many plot details. We understand the antagonists motives.

Disadvantages - Doesn't show enough conventions of a thriller.


Group: Based on idea 1 but it will be changed so that it is from the person who gets kidnapped instead as this was would increase sympathy from the audience to the character. We won't find out much about the antagonists intentions, we will just see the friend being kidnapped. We will get of the game idea as it is cliche and would be too much to fit into a short opening sequence. We may show a bit of the killer but not too much as we don't wan't to give away the antagonists identity so early as when we did our research we discovered that most people prefer the antagonists identity to remain a secret.

This idea follows Todorov's narrative theory as everything is in a state of equilibrium when the girls are walking through the forest happily. This gets disrupted when one of them gets kidnapped. The plot then focuses on the girls attempts to restore the initial state of equilibrium by rescuing their friend without all dying horribly. The characters don't match the examples described in Propp's theory and while the narrative meets some of the themes in Aristotle's theory Todorov's is still the best match.