Group Narrative - Miss Georgiou

What is the purpose of a narrative?
A narrative is defined as a story written in a constructive format; it aims to add a theme to a movie and place it into a specific genre. It keeps the audience engaged as it takes them on a chronological journey which prompts them to from relationships with the characters. A narrative is the main element within a thriller film in keeping the audience engaged as well as them forming relationships and helping them enjoy the stoyline.

Group member 1 -
My idea was a very ill patient is in a hospital on a life support machine after being run over accidentally. When in the hospital a doctor walks in with a mask on he scares the patient who takes off all the medical equipment and runs out, the masked villain chases her out and into a forest where she dies from not being on the life support machine the antagonist then takes her back to the hospital and experiments on her. Despite thinking this was a good idea as a group we decided that we would not be able to create this narrative as we wouldnt have access to a hospital. But we did include a similar forest chase scene which resulted in the victim dying which i initially planned but we altered the narrative which resulted in a different chase scene with different context and ending.

Group member 2 -
A group of girls go to the cinema to see scary film the victim falls asleep, the film ended and everyone leaves the cinema leaving her on her own, she leaves the screening and enters the lobby to find the cinema is shut down and abandoned. She hears a cinema reel rolling she goes to analyse it where she finds a masked man, she runs away shutting the door. Once again we thought we wouldnt be able to make this as we wouldnt have access to a deserted cinema. We did think that this narrative successfully created suspense but didnt have the shock and suprise element of a conventional thriller film.

Group member 3 -
Wai-Lum - A man (steve) gets married to a single mother (katy).  The mother and the daughter (elizabeth), move in with Tom.  For years they live happily.  One day katie comes home crying from school, she talks to her dad and says that her best friend is going out with the guy she likes.  Tom treats Katy like his own daughter and this is the first time he has witnessed her being devasted.  He wants to solve the situation but he is thinking of a plan, he invites katy's friend over and it didnt go as he predicted as he wanted to talk to her friend calmly where he got flashing images of katy of being sad which makes him aggressive.  Tom lies to Katy's friend who is clueless about katy's anger.  Whilst her back is turned he grabs a vase and he smashes it on the back of her head.  She loses consciousness, and takes her to a hidden basement which his family does not know about, he puts the body in there, realises what he has done and becomes mentally unstable.  He continuously starts stabbing her as he is frighted that the victim will start telling everyone.  The police find out the girl is missing and go search houses and the guard dog smells the scent and gets arresting.

Group member 4 -
In her narrative teen girls have been reported missing.  A past female victim comes home one night from a party, however she has been drinking and is tipsy, but she is aware of her surroundings - whilst she walks, on the way she is unknowingly followed by a mass killer. She then eventually arrives home, whilst she enters her house she clumsily leaves her door open which becomes an easy access for the killer. The killer however doesn't kill her but he stalks her inside her own house. For months she carries on her normal life, he lives in her house in hiding. As a group we decided that this would be a good narrative for us to create which could be easily created as well as evoke shock, suspense and suprise within the audience. Despite this we felt that there was numerous other narratives which would appropriate as they would evoke numerous emotions as well as creating excitement.

Vladimir Propp:
Vladimir Propp was the founder of the theory that characters was the most important feature of a film and they make up the narrative. He categorised these characters into 9 category's: hero, villain, donor, dispatcher, false hero, helper, princess and father. He believed that this was the most efficient method to inform the audience of the narrative.

Tzvetan Todorov:
Tzvetan Todorov was the creator of the theory that stated that the narrative follows set guidlines which roughly feature within most films. He catagorised the stages within a film as: A state of equilibrium, a disruption of that order by an event, a recognition that the disorder has occurred, an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption, a return or restoration of a new equilibrium. He also believed that its these set guidlines which are the most important factor within a film.

After discussing the positives and negatives of each individual narrative idea we decided that our narrative would follow a young female victim as she gets home from work and is on the short walk from her car to her house. After exiting her car in a isolated car park she is immediately followed by a masked victim yielding a knife, un-beknown to her. He then continues to follow her out of the car park and down dark scary isolated pathway. After following her for a few minutes he knocks the gate alerating the victim to his presence. She is obviouslty startled by his presence and runs away from him into a nearby forest. He pursues her with intent and she thinks she has eventually lost him but after turning a corner he is there and brutally stabs her. A similar chase scene to the one we used featured within group 1 and 2's individual storyboard but the context of the chase is different from the ones planned by the individuals.