Group narrative- Miss Georgiou

In order to create an opening scene of a thriller film, we must have some understanding of what we want to include in our sequence to make it as effective as we can. The purpose of the group narrative is to see what ideas our group members have and to eventually put our ideas together and create the narrative in which we will be using.  

When we got into our groups, we were able to see what each others ideas were. When discussing our individual ideas with one and other, we shared our ideas by talking about them and showing each other our notes in which we have written about our narratives. One member of my group illustrated what he wanted to do and were able to clearly what he included in his individual idea. Another member of my group showed us her blog in which she wrote about her narrative.

Heather Everingham's, a member of my group, idea for her individual narrative includes a schizophrenic women who hears noises and name calling in her head. She is lead to go through torturing tasks in order to save her sister and her mother. The person who is leading these tasks is hidden behind a mask and therefore his identity is hidden. At the end of the scene the mask is taken off revealing who the person is. This idea presents advantages and disadvantages to us. The advantages of this narrative is that it has many character and therefore will create tension and suspense. The idea is unique and it will engage the audience and it also includes a lot of gore creating an uncomfortable for the audience. However, the disadvantages are that its complicated and not everyone will understand what is going on. It will also take a long time to put together and it is highly unrealistic meaning that it may not be as scary as we would want.

Another member of my group, Freddie Conway, presented his idea to us through illustrations. His idea includes a young female victim cooking in her kitchen. There is a murderer within her house but she cannot see him as she is too oblivious to what is going on around her. The killer then turns round the corner and stabs the girl to death. The advantages of this narrative is the use of the handheld camera shots that we would use to create a sense of chaos and urgency. It is also set within the house making it more realistic and believable for the audience which is an advantage. There are also disadvantages, these include, that its only two characters used so it would be rather short in length as we cannot include more characters to build up time. Also, it is a very cliche, simple idea that is typical of the thriller genre. This is what people would expect to see within the thriller genre and therefore will not find it scary as they know what is to come next. 

My narrative is about a young girl walking her dog in a forest during the late evening. When she is walking her dog she hears rustling in the leaves as if someone is following her. However, she ignores it and thinks that it is only the trees. We are shown shorts clips of the killer following and stalking the girl from a distance. He pulls out a picture from his pocket and it is the female character. The killer hunts her down and kills her and the dog. At the end of the scene, we are given zooming out on the Dog's collar and the girls hat. The advantages of my narrative is that it is very suspense building. It also has a good plot that will engage the audience. There could also be good use of cinematography that would create tension and fear. For instance, a high angled shot would make the girl look small and vulnerable. The disadvantages is that this idea is also very cliche for the thriller genre and it is very predictable. There is also danger when filming this as it is late at night and a unsafe place to film.

For our narrative, we will be including a bit of all of our ideas combined together to make an opening that is as scary and horrific as we can. We will be mainly focusing our narrative on Freddie's and my narrative. There will be a girl cooking within her kitchen, she then tries to look for her boyfriend who she find to be dead. She then goes into a sense of panic running and screaming around the house, however, she does not know that the killer is in the house plotting to kill her too. The killer then finds the girl, however, he doesn't kill her, we just see the killer lurking in the background, behind her. There will then be a black screen with the movie title to pop up to leave the audience in suspense and creating enigma. 

When looking at our group narrative, we researched into the narrative theories. There are three in which we have looked at. The first in which we looked at was a theory by Vladmir Propp, according to Propp, all characters have a narrative function, they provide a structure for the text. He believed that all characters had a function to play. The main characters are, the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess and her father. Another theory in that we looked at was Todorov's theory. Tzvetan Todorov simplified the idea of narrative theory whilst also allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts with his theory of equilibrium and disequilibrium. He states that the fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium and then suffers disruption, disequilibrium. The new equilibrium is produced at the end of the narrative. The last theory that we researched was the theory of Aristotle. He believes in literary criticism, that a scene should include main points. Incident, dramatic question, character goal, atagonist/ protagonist, stakes, resolution and sympathy/ empathy.  

The theory in which links into our narrative is the theory of Vladmir Propp, as we have included vital characters within the scene such as the victim, boyfriend and the killer, all playing a vital role and all having a function to play. Our narrative also links with Aristotle's, this is because it includes a dramatic question, who is the killer? why did the boyfriend get murdered? Also, the audience may feel sympathy and empathy towards the characters.