Research into Narrative within Short Films

Narrative is the way in which fictional and non-fictional stories are told, whether it be from books and novels or film and TV. Many different theorists have looked into theories of narrative and this is what I will be researching and exploring.

Vladimir Propp 

Propp was a Russian theorist and literary who decided to analyse the narratives of over one hundred fairy tales in the 1920's. Propp proposed that characters and their actions can be classified into defined roles and functions. These roles include:

- The Hero (The person seeking something)

- The Villain (The person who opposes the hero)

- The Donor (Helps Hero by providing magical object)

- The Dispatcher (Sends hero on his way)

- The False Hero (Falsely assuming role of Hero)

- The Helper (Supports the Hero)

- The Princess (Reward for the hero/needs protection from villain)

- The Father

Propp also came up with the theory that narrative can be split into something known as the 31 functions. These functions are:

It would be next to impossible to fit all of Propp's 31 functions, as well as the 8 character roles, within our 5 minute short film as we do not have enough time to include them all. However, I feel that we could easily take the parts in which these have been split into and use these to drive the narrative within our film (Preparation, Complication, Transference, Struggle, Return and Recognition)

Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov is a Bulgarian literary theorist who came up with the idea that all narratives start with a state of equilibrium where everything is 'normal' and the protagonist is happy. Then this state of normality is disrupted by an outside force which is to be fought against to regain a new equilibrium. This model of narrative can be easily applied to many films, both short and feature length:




1. A STATE OF EQUILIBRIUM (EVERYTHING IN BALANCE)
2. A DISRUPTION (DISEQUILIBRIUM)
3. A RECOGNITION OF DISEQUILIBRIUM
4. AN ATTEMPT TO REPAIR DAMAGE CAUSED BY DISRUPTION
5. A RESTORATION OF NEW EQUILIBRIUM

Todorov's theory of narrative could easily be applied to a short film which makes it the best form of narrative to use as it isn't very complex and is also a very versatile structure. However, this can limit the use of twists and creative uses of narrative e.g. cliffhangers, circular narratives, etc.