Film Art Ch. 3

Narrative form

A film that tells a story; most common in fictional films

Characters

Agents of cause and effect; have a visible body; has traits

Story

All the events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly presented and those the viewer inferse

3 components of a narrative

Causality, time, and space

Change in knowledge plot

Character learns something, crucial knowledge, that leads to the final turning point of the plot

Goal-oriented plot

Character takes steps to achieve a desired object or state of affairs; searches/investigations

Plot

Everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us

Setup

First quarter or so of a film's plot

Mental subjectivity

Greater depth if the plot plunges into the character's mind

Sound perspective

Hear sounds as the character would

Hierarchy of knowledge

Plot's range of story information

Narration

Plot's way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects; involves range and depth of story information the plot presents

Explosition

Portion of the plot that lays out important story events and character traits in the opening situation

Suspense/uncertainty

Present causes but withhold story effects

Mystery

Suppresses certain story causes and presents only effects

Diegesis

Total world of the story action

Perceptual subjectivity

Visual or auditory point of view

Restricted narration

We don't see or hear anything that the character can't see or hear

Unrestricted narration

We know more, we see more, hear more, than any of the characters can; extremely knowledgeable narration; omniscient narration

Objective narration

What characters say and do; their external behavior

Subjective narration

What characters see and hear; their point-of-view