Question 1B - Narrative Essay - Done

Discuss how you used narrative in one of your coursework productions to create meaning for the audience

For our AS coursework we created a film opening for a drama film. We used a linear narrative whilst the film questions does money bring happiness? As it follows a rich man who is depressed and a working class man who is loving his life. We got inspiration for this film as we morphed main characters from British films as we took out the rich and poor and put them into one film. 

We have portrayed our narrative through the use of camera, editing, mise en scene and sound. For camera we used Barthes narrative codes. We used Barthes code here as there are shots of Ian walking towards his office in the middle of Canary Wharf, showing is a businessman. This shows the contrast in characters as we used Barthes codes again when showing Will walking into the pub, which is a thriving enjoyable environment. This makes the narrative obvious to the audience as they can clearly see the contrast in the two characters jobs. 

The mise en scene played a vital role in helping show the narrative as it simply means what is shown in the shot. We have used Levi Strauss's theory of opposites as the two characters are completely opposite to one another due to Ian being rich and Will being poor. Ian is dressed in an expensive suit whilst Will is dressed in his own casual clothes. This is helpful in showing the difference in the demand of the job. Showing that Ian's job is much more intense and rewarding than Will's in terms of money. As Will is dressed in his own clothes this means that the environment he is in is much more stress free, meaning he is likely to be a much more enjoyable character to Ian. The actors expressions on their face's show their feelings as there is no dialogue in the opening. You will notice throughout the opening Ian's face is constantly emotionless, showing that he is hating his job. Also Ian is always on his own in his working environment and when he comes home, asking the question of whether or not you would chose work over socialising. Will however is the opposite to this, although he doesn't earn nearly as much as Ian does he constantly has a smile on his face whilst he socialises with his friends and his family.

We used a song over the footage throughout the whole video without using any dialogue. The reason behind this was because we wanted the viewers to have an in look on their lives however we didn't want to give too much away, allowing the audience to make up their minds as to who is enjoying their life more.

In the editing process we used a lot of time laps's and opacity fades. The main time laps we used was when Will was working in the pub. This was to contrast the two different environments their both in. the time laps helps to show that Will's day flies by as he is enjoying whilst Ian's day is shown to monotonous and repetitive as it is played at real time. The opacity fades used to change the shots on Ian and Will helps to remind the audience the differences in each character, enhancing the narrative. Another effect used was a reverse shot of Ian walking to his work. This puts across the message of Ian's day being so repetitive and dull, further expanding the narrative.

In conclusion our audience thought that the narrative in our film opening wasn't obvious enough to understand what was going on however they could tell the two differences in both characters in terms of their wealth.