Exam example essay i wrote.

Narrative is the key to most media text. Discuss in relation to one of your pieces of coursework. Narrative is essentially a means to organising material; a configuration of incidents that make up the media text. My thriller sequence does have a coherent narrative structure but it’s also imperative that it depicts the rest of the film due to it being an ‘opening sequence’ and not a finalized chronicle. The piece entails two men abducting and torturing a young and generically beautiful girl for information. The information they’re attempting to acquire is ambiguous within the opening sequence yet it’s apparent that this quest is something that will become clearer as the film progresses. Theorist Todorov proposes the idea that a narrative has five distinct transformations through which the story proceeds. To impose this upon every film ever created would be sharp exaggeration but if looked at openly; it’s hard to argue that there is no trace of this theory within any media text. The five transformations are: a state of equilibrium which disrupted becomes a disequilibrium, which is the recognized; followed by an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption, followed by a return to some kind of equilibrium. My thriller sequence conforms to Todorovs theory due to the similarity of its structure and the indication within the media text of where the piece is going to go. An example would be that the film clearly starts within a state of tranquil equilibrium; i.e. the jogging sequence where the girl is going about on an early morning jog with no apparent idea of the monstrosities that are about to befall on her. She is then beaten and taken to the boot of a car, a clear cut case of a disrupting a state of equilibrium if there ever was one! Theorist Branigan believes that people tend to remember stories in terms of ‘categories of information’ and that narrative is an “activity that organises data into a special pattern which represents and explains experience”. This theory is similar to Todorovs if not slightly less vague, making it easier to apply to films everywhere and conform to with my own media text. Like Todorov; he has constructed a list of incidents that are likely to take place within a conventional narrative: introduction of setting and characters, explanation of state of affairs, initiating event, emotional response or statement of a goal by a protagonist, complicating actions, outcome and finally – reaction to outcome. My thriller sequence conforms to this idea because of its structure. The piece doesn’t set up the female as a character as much as it does for the antagonists, correlating with the original direction of the piece which was to focus on ‘anti-hero’ type characters instead of an overly generic protagonist. Another example of where my media text verifies Branigan’s theory is that there is most certainly an initiating event and though it’s not seen, one enough to instigate an emotional response from a hero. Theorist Propp believed that there were only thirty existing character types in any story who have a specific function within the narrative to cause events. Propps theory may seem to be based upon the ‘arci-typal’ but its fair to assume that these character types can be blended together to steer away from two dimensional characters and create depth. My piece imitates and subverts Propps theory because it focus’s on the roll of the ‘anti-hero’ a blend of Propps villain and hero. A clear imitation and conformation though is the appearance of the girl who fits perfectly into Propps description of a ‘heroine/princess’ character. Her function is to play the damsel in distress.