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In VCE Media, the study of narrative involves an examination of how narratives are organised, structured and engage audiences. Most teachers of VCE Media choose to study two films. Popular narrative texts include Psycho, Run Lola Run, American Beauty, Rear Window and Memento. Narrative is one of the most fascinating and fun areas of study in VCE Media. Every time you've parked yourself in front of the television to watch a film, every time you've forked over a handful of cash for a movie ticket and popcorn combo, you've been immersing yourself in the world of cinema and preparing for this moment. Students who plan to make a video for their School Assessed Task also get to start thinking about how professional filmmakers structure narratives to engage audiences.

Production and Story Elements

The study of narrative is a specialised area and, as a consquence, has specific terminology. To confidently discuss the way a narrative is structured and how it engages an audience, you will need to become familiar with these phrases and terms.

During your study of narrative, you will examine how production elements contribute to narratives. Production elements include:

• camera/film/video techniques and qualities including shot selection, movement and focus
• lighting, including naturalistic and expressive
• visual composition and mise en scene
• acting
• sound, including dialogue, music and sound effects
• editing/vision and sound design and mixing, including style, techniques, placement, pace and rhythm of editing;

You will also look at the contribution that story elements make to narratives. Story elements include:

• the narrative possibilities, issues and/or ideas established in the opening sequence(s)
• establishment and development of the character(s) and relationships between characters
• the setting and its function in the narrative
• the ways in which multiple storylines may comment upon, contrast, interrelate or interconnect with other storylines in the plot
• the structuring of time, including order, duration and frequency of events, contraction and expansion of time, linear and non-linear time frames
• cause and effect, including character motivations
• point(s) of view from which the narrative is presented, including character or other viewpoint(s)
• narrative progression, including the relationship between the opening sequence(s), developments within the narrative and the closure of the narrative;

A good way to remember production elements is using the acronym CAMELS (camera techniques, acting, mise-en-scene and visual composition, editing, lighting and sound). It's important that you can recall production and story elements quickly, particularly during the Unit 3&4 VCE Media Exam.

Genre, Audience Experience, Expectations and Response

Years of watching films and television means you have a sophisticated understanding of genre. Genre is simply a word that means 'type'. Films are classified into different genres, such as: action, adventure, comedy, crime, horror, musicals, science-fiction, war, westerns and film noir. Each of these genres has particular narrative conventions. Audiences are very knowledgeable about the conventions of these genres. So familiar, in fact, that it's easy to identify the genre of a film just by watching a few seconds.

Imagine this: It's late at night and there is a car parked on the side of the road, wreathed in mist and surrounded by trees. Its sole occupant - a woman - looks around, panic stricken. "Rich?" she cries desperately, hoping that her boyfriend is responsible for the mysterious noises outside the car. Her breathing is ragged as she peers through the windshield. Trees rustle ominously in the darkness. She panics, fumbling with the locks and closing the windows. Intense, non-diegetic music builds towards a crescendo.

This twenty-five second clip is from an episode of the television program Supernatural. Although they might not identify the text, everyone who watches this clip easily identifies the genre. Horror. The low key lighting, intense non-diegetic music, mise-en-scene and setting are all conventions of the horror genre.

Consider the relationship between the narratives you are studying and the genres that they belong to. Some filmmakers deliberately play on expectations of genre to engage audiences. There are other cases when audiences enjoy narratives because they conform closely to genre conventions. In the case of romantic comedies, for example, audiences enjoy the resolution provided by a predictably happy ending.

The expectations and knowledge of an audience plays an important role in the way they engage with narratives. Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film Psycho, is a great example of a filmmaker deliberately subverting the expectations of an audience. Midway through the narrative the main character, Marion Crane, is brutally murdered. This was particularly shocking because audiences conventionally expect characters to survive until the end of the film.

Audience expectations of a film are usually generated by the marketing campaign for a film. M Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable was marketed as a thriller, similar to his previous film The Sixth Sense. The film's poor reception can possibly be attributed to audiences expecting a thriller when they were, in fact, watching a superhero narrative.

Reception Context

Reception context, the conditions under which a narrative is viewed, also plays an important role in audience engagement. Movies are increasingly downloaded and watched on portable media players, such as iPods. Surely a viewer will have a different experience watching a film on their iPod compared to the all encompassing experience of seeing it in a cinema. Likewise, audience engagement with a film might suffer if they view a poorly recorded bootleg copy of a film.

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is another example of how reception context can influence audience engagement with the narrative. The movie had six scenes filmed on an IMAX camera. According to numerous reviews, the print screened at IMAX cinemas was more dramatic and engaging than the original.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho also presents us with another interesting example of reception context. When the film was released, it was regarded as truly horrific and shocking. Modern audiences, however, respond to the film very differently because they have generally been exposed to much more graphic and shocking violence in more contemporary narratives. Psycho, therefore, often isn't as engaging for modern audiences compared to when it was first released.

Getting Started

Rewatch the films you are studying for narrative. What did you expect the films would be like? What did you know about the genre of your films? Did the films fulfil your expectations? Were you surprised or engaged if they didn't? Did you enjoy the predictability of the narrative? What were your favourite scenes? Often, these can provide interesting inroads into how your texts engage audiences.