A supporting outline of Narrative Codes for moving image texts for A level media studies students

1. UNDERSTANDING
HOW NARRATIVE IS
CONSTRUCTED
CAN HELP YOU TO TELL A
STORY IN AN
INTERESTING OR MORE
MEMORABLE WAY

2. Technical Codes (Topic Specific)
• Camerawork
• Lighting
• Sound
• Codes and Conventions
• Editing and sound for audio-visual media and graphic
design elements for print-based and interactive media
• What work is being done by the sound
track/commentary/language of the text?
• Language use
•Editing
Symbolic Codes
• What are the denotative and connotative levels of
meaning?
• What is the significance of the text’s connotations?
• What are the non-verbal structures of meaning in the
text (e.g. gesture, facial expression, props etc)?
•What is the significance of mise-en-
scène/sets/settings?
• Semiotics
Representations
• Who is being represented?
•Where is being represented?
• In what way?
• Mediation
• The role of selection, construction and anchorage in
creating representations
• How the media uses representations
• The points of view, messages and values underlying
those representations.
• The Reflective view , the Intentional way and the
Constructionist view of representation
•Stereotypes/Countertypes/architypes
• Hegemony
• Pluralism
Audience
• To whom is the text addressed? What is the target
audience?
• What assumptions about the audience’s
characteristics are implicit within the text?
• What assumptions about the audience are implicit in
the text’s scheduling or positioning?
The ways in which audiences can be categorized (e.g.,
gender, age, ethnicity, social & cultural background,
advertisers' classifications) – Class,
Young and Rubicam’s Four Consumers, LifeMatrix
• How media producers and texts construct audiences
and users
How audiences and users are positioned (including
preferred, negotiated and oppositional responses to
that positioning).
• Ideology
• Uses and gratifications
• Adorno
• Mode of address
• Pleasures – Dahlgren & Stam
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Genre
• To which genre does the text belong?
• What are the generic conventions within the text?
• Who creates genre?
• Hybrids
• Themes and Ideology
• Frank McConnell
• Post-modernism
• Intertextuality
• The cast and genre associations
Narrative
• What are the major themes of the narrative?
• How is the narrative organised and structured?
• is the narrative Restricted (like a news broadcast) or
Unrestricted?
• How is the audience positioned in relation to the
narrative? Is there Subjective or Objective character
identification?
• Propp
• Todorov
• Barthes
• Levi-Strauss
•Allan Cameron – modular Narratives
• John Ellis
• Single/Two Goal Plot
• Genre/Cultural/Internal Repetition & representation
• Segmented Narrative
Textual Analysis
Grid
Institutions/Ideology
• What is the institutional source of the text?
• In what ways has the text been influenced or shaped
by the institution which produced it?
• Is the source a public service or commercial
institution? What difference does this make to the text?
• Who owns and controls the institution concerned and
does this matter?
• How has the text been distributed?
• What are the major values, ideologies and
assumptions underpinning the text or naturalised within
it?
• What criteria have been used for selecting the content
presented?

3. Understanding the narrative codes
will help you to understand
1.How an audience makes sense of the
narrative
2.How the producers convey meaning
3.The different theories behind narrative
In turn this should help you to
create strong narratives for your
own work

4. critical theory - the basics:
Narrative: Narrative is defined as “a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship
occurring in time” (Bordwell & Thompson, Film Art, 1980).
Diegesis: The internal world created by the story that the characters themselves
experience and encounter.
Story and plot
Story – all events referenced both explicitly in a narrative and inferred (including
backstory as well as those projected beyond the action)
Plot – the events directly incorporated into the action of the text and the order in
which they are presented
Narrative Range
Unrestricted narration – A narrative which has no limits to the information that
is presented i.e. a news bulletin.
Restricted narration – only offers minimal information regarding the narrative
i.e. Thrillers
Narrative Depth
Subjective character identification: the viewer is given unique access to what a
range of characters see and do
Objective character identification:the viewer is given unique access to a
character’s point of view such as seeing things from the character’s mind, dreams,
fantasies or memories

6. HOW MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF
NARRATIVE ARE THERE?
ARE THERE IMPORTANT NARRATIVE
THEORIES OR THEORISTS I
SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?

7. LINEAR AND NON-LINEAR
• Non-linear stories are
popular in computer games
– it means the story doesn’t
follow a straight line. In a
game, you can often choose
different paths.
• In films like Memento, the
story moves around in time
and is often told in
flashbacks, where a
character looks back in time.
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?
v=0vS0E9bBSL0
• What kind of audience would
like this kind of film?
• Linear narratives are in
a “straight line” from
start to end.
• They attempt to convey
a realistic effect NOT
realistic aesthetic in
terms of timeline
• They try to suggest a
‘normal’ timeline of
action
• The follow natural order
of how we understand
time
• This is more suited to a
mainstream production

8. MULTI-STRAND AND DUAL
NARRATIVES
https://www.youtube.
com/watch?
v=khB_wpn-bmc
https://www.youtube.
com/watch?
v=Zmu70sS4C34
• Theses narratives often
have more than one
story and more than
one set of characters.
Sometimes the stories
“cross over” and the
characters meet.
• Sometimes, but rarely,
they are kept apart…
• These often follow
one character. It is
one person’s story.

9. BARTHES’ ACTION/ENIGMA CODES
• Action codes • Enigma Codes
• Roland Barthes believed
that in some films and other
narratives one action will
lead to another and this is
where the story comes
from… e.g. somebody kills,
so a friend hunts them
down… Here the audience
know why things occur.
• It is a film structure where
logic is applied: Action,
Adventure and to some
extend Sci-Fi & Fantasy
apply this code.
• On the other hand, it can
be mysteries that drive a
story forward… The
audience watch to find out
why things are happening.
• This is a more common
Narrative code for Genres
such as Thriller, Crime,
Mystery and even more
sophisticated Romance.
• The audience become
engaged with ‘solving’ or
guessing the ending of the
story

10. TZVETAN TODOROV
Todorov suggested that the
primary function of the
narrative was to solve a
problem.
Characters pass through a
series of stages of a linear
narrative where events follow
in chronological order.
Todorov stated that narratives
are led by events in a cause
and effect format.
He states that narratives are
structured in five logical
stages:
1. The Narrative starts in
a state of Equilibrium:
Stable, balanced,
unchanging system.
2. An action or character
disrupts the equilibrium.
3. Following recognition of
the disruption a quest to
restore the equilibrium
ensues.
4. The narrative moves to a
confrontation / climax:
there is an attempt to
repair the disruption
5. Resolution / equilibrium is
restored and reinstated.
10
This narrative is familiar and is conventional: we see it
applied to many ‘mainstream’ film Narratives

11. VLADIMIR PROPP
• Russian literary critic and folklorist, was concerned with the relationship
between narrative and characters. He analysed many folktales.
• Through his research, he argued that stories are character driven and that
plots develop around the actions of characters. He looked at characters
and their function within the story.
• He hypothesised that characters have the role of narrative ‘spheres of
action’ or functions and that there were 7 of them although theorists now
have extended this list
1. The hero – is the agent who restores equilibrium, he carries the events
through the story. (In modern narrative, the hero can also be female).
‘He’ can be a seeker hero or a victim hero
2. The villain – who creates the narrative disruption and tries to prevent
the hero from accomplishing his mission.
3. The doner – aids the hero by giving him something: an object / advice
etc
4. The helper – often a ‘sidekick’ (like figure) who helps the hero / aides
the restoration of equilibrium
5. The princess – the character most threatened by the villain who has to
be saved. Her father – rewards the hero (often by giving his daughter
as a prize) and is often the despatcher
6. The diepatcher – sends the hero on a quest or task
7. The false hero – appears to be good and tries to trick the hero by
giving bad advice – s/he is revealed at the end.

12. LEVI-STRAUSS’S BINARY
OPPOSITIONS
• Levi-Strauss (pronounced Lev-ee, and no relation to the
Jeans guy), introduced the notion of binary oppositions as a
useful way to consider the production of meaning within
narratives.
• E.g. Hero – Villain, Light – Dark, Man – Machine, Male –
Female etc.
• He argued that all construction of meaning was dependent,
to some degree, on these oppositions.
12

13. ALLAN CAMERON
The Modular Narratives Narrative theory presents the sense of time in moving
image productions as “divisible and subject to manipulation”.
Cameron identified four different types of modular narrative:
Anachronic modular narratives involve the use of flashbacks and/or flashforwards,
with no clear dominance between any of the narrative threads. These narratives also
often repeat scenes directly or via a different perspective. Examples include: Pulp Fiction
and Memento.
Forking-path narratives juxtapose alternative versions of a story, showing the
possible outcomes that might result from small changes in a single event or group of
events. The forking-path narrative introduces a number of plotlines that usually
contradict one another. Examples include Groundhog Day, Sliding Door, Cloverfield and
Run Lola Run.
Episodic narratives are organised as an abstract series or narrative anthology.
Abstract series type of modular narrative is characterized by the operation of a non-
narrative formal system which appears to dictate (or at least overlay) the organization of
narrative elements such as a sequence of numbers or the alphabet. Anthology consists of
a series of shorter tales which are apparently disconnected but share a random
similarity, such as all ‘episodes’ being survivors of a shipwreck.
Split screen narratives are different from the other types of modular narrative
discussed here, because their modularity is articulated along spatial rather than temporal
lines. These films divide the screen into two or more frames, juxtaposing events within
the same visual field, in a sustained fashion. Examples include Timecode / Source Code –
One of the earliest was ‘The Boston Strangler’ (1968) https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=l48RxxhjhqM

14. TESTING UNDERSTANDING
• There are five stages to this activity. Stage five
sees you complete the following quiz:
1. Name an example of a text with
a non-linear narrative.
2. Name a text with a linear
narrative.
3. Name a text with a single-strand
narrative.
4. Name a text with a multi-strand
narrative.
5. Name one of Barthes’ codes.
6. Name the other of Barthes’
codes.
7. Name the first stage in Todorov’s
narrative structure.
8. Name the second stage in
Todorov’s narrative structure.
9. Name the third stage in
Todorov’s narrative structure.
10. Name the fourth stage in
Todorov’s narrative structure.
11. Name the final stage in
Todorov’s narrative structure.
12. Name all of Propp’s character
types.
13. One.
14. Two
15. Three
16. Four
17. Five
18. Six
19. Seven
20. Example - Binary Opposition.
21. Who came up with the theory of
Binary Oppositions?