Narrative structure

The Narrative structure of a piece refers to the order which events occur and is usually referred to as the Todorov Model, that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end and occur in that specific order. This is so the audience find the film easier to follow and understand without needing to connect different pieces of the film together in order to make sense of the order of events and why they have played out. However, films have come out, and been successful without following this model. Films such as Vantage Point and Cloud Atlas.

Using Vantage Point as a specific example, the film continuously flicks from beginning to middle, beginning to middle etc. This allows the film to show the series of events from different characters perspectives and allow the audience a better understanding of the film. However, the audience does become very involved trying to connect the different stories of each character to make one series of events and continuity and can be at times difficult to see a clear link between the two character's stories before they are completely revealed. This then obviously creates a lot of enigma within the characters themselves and how they tie into events. This method of narrative structure does create a great deal of interest in the film instead of just following the conventional structure of beginning middle end and also readily involves the audience themselves into its plot.

For short films however, this structure can be harder to pull off as you do not really have enough time to explain the links between the different parts of the film before you are into feature length. To have it put into a short film, the film idea would need to be fairly simple in concept but be played out to look more complex. This would then make it simpler for the director to create but also more interesting for the audience to watch. Thus, in my own short film, I believe I will stick to the conventional todorov model as it is far easier to create a story in that structure and also continue the audience's interest.