Narrative shape

Main character and goal Antagonist Catalytic event Resolution Dramatic arc Narrative style Narrative shape Tone... 

The narrative shape. The factor of time is not inherently critical in the melodrama. 

For docudrama, as for melodrama, it is useful to look at case studies in order to understand the narrative shape of the form. The two case studies below will represent two of the subcategories of the docudrama the event, Peter Watkins s Culloden (1964) and the political portrait, Ken Loach s Land and Freedom (1996). 

A native of London, England, Bernard Miller lived and worked in twenty different nations over a period of thirty years. Travel and adventure shaped his life and work as an employee of the United Nations, the European Parliament and the European Union. In the following narrative he comments on the environmental health policies he has seen in action in various countries. Those comments are inspiring but bittersweet to me, because the U.S. compares so unfavorably. 

To understand both fashion and alchemy we must relate these practices to a concept with which they are both deeply entwined the concept of myth. Fashion and alchemy are both usually seen as unserious practices with neither the social value of the fine arts nor the accuracy of the exact sciences. But myth is neither the opposite of science, nor is it a deception or untrue image of the world. Myths are the powerful imaginative fabrics we weave our world with. Myth does not veil reality but makes it visible, and just like fashion we live our lives inside it. It wraps the world with a holistic threadwork not fragmenting the world into atomized and isolated data but weaving the narratives of the world into visible and tangible shapes. 

In other words, Baudelaire points his readers in the right direction and shapes their reaction to his narrative. 

Metzger s narrative was reinforced by Pierre Brunet s nearly contemporaneous presentation of eighteenth-century French science as a battleground between Cartesians and Newtonians.7 There were of course significant faceoffs between Cartesians and Newtonians, especially in physics, and famously in the issue of the shape of the earth. 

Before discussing the detailed chemistry, kinetics, and mechanisms of the various pathways of polymer synthesis, it is necessary to introduce some of the fundamental concepts of polymer science in order to provide essential background to such a development. We need to know what a polymer is and how it is named and classified. It is also necessary to obtain an appreciation of the molecular size and shape of polymer molecules, the molar mass characteristics, the important transition temperatures of polymers, and their distinctive behavior both in solid state and in solution. These concerns are addressed in the first four chapters of the book while the remaining six chapters deal with the important categories of polymerization processes and their mechanisms and kinetic aspects. Throughout this journey the narrative in the text is illuminated with thoughtfully worked out examples which not only complement but also supplement, where necessary, the theoretical development in the text. 

Although our main focus is on the short narrative film, we intend to demonstrate the ways in which each short form has borrowed freely from the others. It is important that less-experienced screenwriters realize that, even when the scripting of a narrative, documentary, or experimental film proceeds in an informal way—using improvisation, for example—the film itself still needs a purpose and shape to make a coherent whole. This is true even of stories that may concern themselves primarily with form, or form as context, as is frequently the case with postmodern films or videos. 

It happens that the two structures that have proved most useful in shaping material for a short screenplay are those considered by scholars to be the very oldest of narrative forms the journey, and what we call the ritual occasion. If you have a main character clearly in mind, and a good idea of what that character s situation is and of what it is that he or she is after, you can often get a script off to a good start simply by choosing one or the other of these as a structure for your story line and seeing where it takes you. 

The journey is the oldest, truest, most inescapable shape for a story. From the nursery story to biblical narrative to contemporary novel, someone is always setting out from home.3... 

The shape of Culloden is the course of the battle itself. There is a lead-up to the battle, and there is an aftermath. However, the major part of the narrative is devoted to the battle itself, its details, and its outcome. 

The second dimension to the structure of the docudrama is that it can be shaped as a character-driven or a plot-driven narrative. Whichever is cho-... 

Whether the narrative is plot-driven or character-driven, the dominant or shaping element of the docudrama is the voice of the writer-director. Whatever opinion is being pursued, it is that view that will shape the narrative. Very much like a documentary, the narrative is shaped as a case to be proven. Plot and character are tools used to illustrate, but the organization and presentation of the narrative, whether through onscreen or offscreen narration, is the principal shaping device. It is here where the voice of the author resides. 

Oscar s birth is the catalytic event of the narrative. In the birth canal, he appears already fully formed, with knowing eyes, the same size he will be when he makes his fateful decision to stop growing. He is thus presented at birth with a sense of seeing and knowing that one does not associate with a newborn child. This presentation makes credible the act of will that marks the end of his growth. It also positions Oscar as the perennial observer rather than participant in the events that shape his life. Also, because he is presented as a passive observer—in essence the position of the child in society— we observe events as he does, with an unusual detachment given the nature of the events that will follow. 

Experimental narrative should not be confused with the more specifically nonnarrative experimental film or video. The experimental film or video is often entirely taken up with an issue of style. In the extreme (in more than one Norman McLaren film, for example), the film can concern itself with the variations of movements of abstract lines or shapes. In McLaren s films, line or shape give a visual dimension to an abstract musical piece. The narrative intention is at best remote more often in such work, it is not even a factor. In the experimental narrative, in contrast, narrative intention does have a role. However, the form or the style of the piece is as important as—in some cases more important than—the narrative. 

Here too there is a clue to the nature of experimental narrative. It follows a nonlinear pattern as opposed to a linear time or character-arc frame. The usual elements that shape a story—a goal-directed main character, a plot— and a traditional genre all tend to be subverted in the experimental narrative. We are left with the powerful stylistic elements of the experience. 

In the above example, the relationship itself is the shaping device. In Exotica, a place is the shaping structure. In Milcho Manchevski s Before the Rain, an idea—racial hatred kills love—is the shaping idea. Shaping devices become a means to create a structure. The shaping device, however, is not linear—ergo the unpredictability of the experimental narrative. 

The overall structure of River of Things comes from the Neruda poems. But a secondary structure comes from the tone—a playful attitude toward the narratives of each of the odes. Although the structure is loose, it is nevertheless present, and it shapes the rueful observation of Neruda with a tonal appreciation of those elements in life that we ignore but whose functionality Neruda and the filmmakers laud. 

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