Coursework Blog

The task was to deliver a lesson on the topic of 'Narrative Form' to the other film studies class in my year. We had to work with a peer, and create a PowerPoint presentation as part of the lesson, along with whatever else we wanted to do. For the lesson, we created a PowerPoint presentation. In order to do this, we researched 3 different narrative theorists, which were: Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss. We also then researched and added what their theories are. The task we decided to ask the class to do was an essay question - Apply narrative theory to a range of scenes from one of the following films: 'Singin' in the Rain', 'The Gold Rush' or 'E.T.' Having to apply the different theories to a film or scenes from a film helps to understand how they follow or go against them, and how the narrative is driven.

The task was to plan a lesson to deliver to my class. I had to plan the lesson with a peer on the topic of 'Sound in Singin' in the Rain' and The Gold Rush'. To do this, we made a PowerPoint presentation and asked them to also plan an answer to an exam-style question in this topic. When creating the PowerPoint, we researched various types of sound in films, such as diegetic, non-diegetic and foley. We then also applied these to SITR and TGR as a whole, and then to certain scenes. This helped with the planning task as it allows you to make refences to the film in specific detail. These are some examples of the slides from the PowerPoint:

The narrative of ‘Where have I Been All Your Life’ is driven by binary opposites to some extent. This is since the husband is seen to be unfaithful compared to the faithful wife, which is later shown to be inaccurate. Furthermore, Mulvey’s male and female gaze theory comes into context with this short film as a part of representation, because the husband is not frowned upon for having cheated, whereas the wife is. The male characters also dominate he female characters in tis short film which supports this theory. Jenkins’ theory involving genre also plays a part in this short film since it is a hybrid of various genres, such as drama and comedy. This highlights the theory as it is modern and has no fixed structure. Blumler and Katz’ theory that states that the audience can relate to a character or their situation can also be applied to ‘Where Have I Been All Your Life’ as an audience theory. Furthermore, some spectators may be in a similar situation to the main character, or the co

Over the summer holidays, my task was to create a PowerPoint presentation of a range of macro elements theorists. I had to apply the films that I have studied to the theorists and explain reasons for this. Here are some examples of this: