Friday, March 20th 2020

Andry Garcia
6B
11170260000137
An Introduction to Cinema – Intrinsic Elements in Movie

Narrative is a story, a chain of events linked by cause and effect

and occurring in time and space.1
There are 2 dimensional closely related which contribute to telling a
cinematic story:
 Narrator is a person who or what tells the story
 Narration is the act of telling story
In other words, narrator delivers the narration which conveys the
narrative. Filmmakers employ different approaches to the concept of
narrator (who or what tells the story) and narration (how that story is
told) to shape the viewer’s experience of the narrative (the story
itself).2

A narrative may cue us to draw parallels among characters, settings,

situations, times of day, or any other elements.3 By looking from the
narrator’s view and the setting of narration’s angle, it could regain the
plot which focus on the perspective the way of the movies represents.

In every movie, the camera is the primary narrator. Its narration

consists of the many visual elements it captures and arranges in every
composition in every shot. The camera usually focuses to tell the
story.

And the camera isn’t always a movie’s only narrator. Some movies use
more than one narrator to deliver the narration. This narration can be
in the form of a character’s particular perspective on the narrative’s
events. There are two kinds of narrator in the story, based on Point of
View in the story:
 A first-person narrator is a character in the narrative who
typically imparts information in the form of voice-over narration,
which is when we hear a character’s voice over the picture
without actually seeing the character speak the words. This
technique of a character speaking to the audience allows us to
1
Film Art. An Introduction 11th Edition, p.73.
2
Looking at Movies 5th Edition: An Introduction to Cinema, p.122.
3
Film Art. An Introduction 11th Edition, p.73.
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hear one narration—from the first-person character narrator—

while simultaneously watching the narration provided by our
narrator camera.
 A third-person narrator is information in the narrative that using
voice-over narration expressed by a voice imposed from outside
of the narrative and knows all and can thus provide objective
context to any situation. The third-person narrator interjects to
let us into a character’s head at a crucial narrative moment.

For the third-person narrator can be in two forms to present the

story. There are:
 Omniscient: providing a view of all aspects of a movie’s action
or characters. Omniscient provides all the characters in the
shot of camera involved in the elements of the making story,
has unrestricted access to all aspects of the narrative. It can
provide any character’s experiences and perceptions, as well
as information that no character knows. An omniscient
camera shows the audience whatever it needs to in order to
best tell the story.
 Restricted: provides information to the audience only as a
specific character learns of it. The setting of picture in camera
would focus only get the meaning form, perspective,
experience, and all the events, based on protagonist center-
angle. This approach encourages the audience to identify with
the character’s singular perspective on perplexing and
frightening events—and invites us to participate in the gradual
unlocking of the narrative’s secrets.

Narrative Structure
Narrative structure is typically characterized by a three-act format.
The first act establishes character, setting, and tone, then introduces
a goal with an inciting incident. The second act is structured around
the protagonist’s pursuit of the goal and the conflict and obstacles
that must be confronted before the goal is either gained or lost at the
peak of the rising action and stakes. The narrative then falls as the
third act resolves the conflict, wraps up ongoing storylines, and gives
the viewer a chance to either celebrate or mourn the dramatic result.
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Character
In the narratives, one of the elements being the center of the
story, which role the plots happen is character. The nature of
that pursuit depends on the character’s background, position,
personality, attitudes, and beliefs. These traits govern how the
character reacts to opportunities and problems, makes
decisions, acts upon those decisions, and deals with the
consequences of those actions.
Often characters achieve their goals by changing their situation
—perhaps they gain fame or money or just survival—but they also
change their attitudes or values.

Each new character makes possible a different take on the same

old story. Think of all the love stories or murder mysteries you’ve
watched. The individual personalities falling in love and/or
solving (and committing) crimes play a large part in keeping
those archetypal narrative approaches fresh. The directors,
actors, cinematographers, and designers responsible for putting
the characters and their story on-screen build upon the
characterizations in the screenplay to develop how exactly each
character looks, speaks, and behaves in the movie.

The allies and adversaries (all of whom have traits of their own)
that the character attracts are influenced by these traits, as are
all interactions between these other various characters. And that
pursuit, and all the decisions, actions, consequences,
relationships, and interactions that intersection and influence it,
is the story.
.
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Round; has a three-dimensional traits which the character is

changing due to the plot scene. (Gordon from E.M. Forster: 95)
They may possess numerous subtle, repressed, or even
contradictory traits that can change significantly over the course
of the story—sometimes surprisingly so. Because they display
the complexity we associate with our own personalities, we tend
to see round characters as more lifelike.

- Flat; a two-dimensional character which often be summarized

only one or two characters. (Gordon, pp. 95-96). In contrast,
relatively uncomplicated flat characters exhibit few distinct
traits and do not change significantly as the story progresses.
This doesn’t mean that one character classification is any more
legitimate than the other. Different types of stories call for
different approaches to character traits, behavior, and
development.

Identify of Main Character

O Protagonist: a primary character who pursues the goal of story.
The protagonist is sometimes referred to as the hero (or heroine),
but this term can be misleading, since engaging narratives do not
necessarily depend on worthy goals or brave and sympathetic
characters. As long as the protagonist actively pursues the goal
in an interesting way, the viewer cannot help becoming invested
in that pursuit, and by extension, the story.
O Antagonist: a neutral position to be unsympathetic for
protagonist. An Antagonist mentioned as anti-hero role, which
they are the only one who does balancing the role of protagonist.
O Narrative craves imperfect characters because those
imperfections provide obstacles, another essential building block
of storytelling. We’ll discuss obstacles in the section on narrative
structure. For now, simply consider that a romance about a shy,
awkward boy in love with the head cheerleader is likely to be
much more interesting than a love story between the two most
beautiful and popular kids in school. Character imperfections and
flaws also give characters room to grow.

Story and Plot

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When the character has a direction as a role of the story / plot,

therefore the story and the plot itself has a differential meaning, but
in the same way they have a role to represent it in the movie’s
elements.

The story is the chain of events in chronological order. Story may be

presented in various ways. If it uses flashbacks instead of linear
time, or decide to organize events around one character rather than
another, or if it makes other choices about presentation, it will be
creating a different plot. Plot guides the viewer in building up a
sense of all the relevant events, both the ones explicitly presented
and those that must be inferred.

From the standpoint of the filmmaker, the story is the sum total of
all the events in the narrative. As the storyteller, it could present
some of these events directly (that is, display or mention them in
the plot), hint at events that are not presented, and simply ignore
other events. The spectator’s task is quite different. It creates the
story in minds, thanks to cues in the plot. And in telling someone
about the movie it’s just seen, it can be summarized in two ways:
recap the story, or recap the plot. Plot distinction affects all three
aspects of narrative: causality, time, and space. Each offers the
filmmaker a huge array of choice for guiding the viewer’s
experience of the film.

 Cause and Effect

- Character as Causes
 Most often, characters are persons, or at least entities like
persons. In any narrative film, either fictional or documentary,
characters create causes and register effects. Within the
film’s overall form, they make things happen and respond to
events. Their actions and reactions contribute strongly to our
engagement with the film.
 Along with a body, a character has traits: attitudes, skills,
habits, tastes, psychological drives, and any other qualities
that distinguish him or her. Some characters may have only a
few traits. When it said a character possesses several varying
traits, some at odds with others, it tends to call that character
complex, or three-dimensional, or well developed.
- Time as Causes
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 Causes and their effects are basic to narrative, but they

take place in time. The story–plot distinction helps them to
understand how filmmakers use narrative form to
manipulate time.
 As watching a film, it constructs story time on the basis of
what the plot presents. Even if events are shown in
chronological order, most plots don’t show every detail from
beginning to end. It assumes that the characters spend
uneventful time sleeping, eating, traveling, and so forth, so
the periods containing such irrelevant action can be
skipped over. Another possibility is to have the plot present
the same story event more than once, as when a character
recalls a traumatic incident.
 Filmmakers can choose to present events out of story
order. A flashback, like the ones it proposed for our
hypothetical romantic comedy, is simply a portion of the
story that the plot presents out of chronological sequence.
 Flashbacks usually don’t confuse us, because it mentally
rearrange the events into chronological order: teenage
years precede old age, the hangover comes after a night of
partying. If story events can be thought of as 1-2-3-4, then
the plot that uses a flashback presents something like 2-1-
3-4, or 3-1-2-4. The filmmaker can also shuffle story order by
employing [ CITATION Bor13 \l 1033 ]
 a flashforward. This pattern moves from present to future,
then back to the present, and could be represented as 1-2-
4-3. In either case, given the plot order it figured out story
order.
- Space as Causes
 In film narrative, space is usually an important factor which
events occur in particular locales. Normally, the locale of
the story action is also that of the plot, but sometimes the
plot leads us to imagine story spaces that are never shown.
 Further, it can introduce an idea akin to the concept of
screen duration. Besides story space and plot space,
cinema employs screen space: the visible space within the
frame. Just as screen duration selects certain plot spans
for presentation, so screen space selects portions of plot
space.
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Bibliography
Barsam, Richard and Dave Monahan . Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film 5th Edition. New York
& London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016.

Bordwell, David, Kristin Thompson and Jeff Smith. Film Art: An Introduction 11th Edition. New York:
McGraw-Hill Education, 2013.