Narrative spine

Simplicity of structure allows for complexity in the overall film. If you have a strong narrative spine, you can hang a tremendous amount of content onto it and audiences will stay with you. This strategy is a big part of what distinguishes and defines the best of creative nonfiction film It not only tells a story, it tells a rigorous, detailed, and even authoritative story—and yet it can be described in simple and compelling terms. 

He felt that he d have one more year of planting and harvest followed by an auction. [The Jordans plan was to auction off their livestock, equipment, and personal belongings in order to pay off their debts and keep the land itself, 450 acres.] That gave us the possibility of a narrative spine. It would have been much harder if not impossible to just make a film about day-to-day life on the farm, and be able to get into the kinds of issues that we did. We filmed four times over the course of about a year and a half... 

The relationship between Alice and the old woman is intriguing and in one sense central to the narrative and thematic spine of the play. It is also interesting for the sense in which Bond s delineation of the two characters explores mutual but different constructions of the female. 

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