Structure of Film
By Kawin B. “How Movies Work” the cinema can be divided into 4 major categories of expression: narrative film, nonfiction film, animated film and avant-garde film. The first thing most people want to know about the film is whether it tells a story, and then what kind of story that is. Narrative films tell stories. Usually the term “story” refers to a fictitious series of events, but it is also possible for narrative film to tell a true story.
Story and Discourse. The story is the series of hypothetical events as they “happen” in time of fiction or of factual events in history. The plot is the order in which selected story-events are arranged. The discourse is the narrative line, the vehicle and manner in which the story is told or presented to the audience.
In virtually any narrative film something has to happen, and to happen in such way that it can be watched with some degree of comprehension. Whether or not they are intellectually complex, the movies work primarily with action and emotion.
Hollywood Formulas. The makers of narrative films often rely on classical percepts about what constitutes a “good story”. There can be summarized as follows: There ought to be one or more major characters. They ought to be in some kind of conflict. That conflict ought to be acted out (dramatized). Some degree of tension ought to accumulate as the events proceed, until that tension peaks and is released at a climax. The climax should be followed by a resolution that wraps up the threads of the story. Both the characters and the meaning of the events ought to be clarified and advanced by this progression from exposition, complication, reversal (or twist), and climax to resolution.
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