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Blog3: Narrative theory
Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician.
-Hermeneutic codes（emigmas）: Use a question or puzzle to pique the reader's interest and make them want to keep reading. For example, in a thriller movie, scary and mysterious music and shots are usually used to keep the audience watching the movie.That also a kind of imply that some story gonna happened later. Even in some advertisement, especially for the slogan, This even affects everyone who sees this ad. This can be used to attract consumers and increase profits.
-Proairetic codes (actions)：Actions can have many meanings, and every occurrence is associated with an action. For the action in the movie, it may be connected to the story of the next scene, and sometimes the action can also express the personality of the character. In Pride and Prejudice, the heroine reads a book, and her movements are very elegant, which also paved the way for the subsequent plot.
-Semantic codes (connotative elements): For Semantic codes, lighting and mise en scene are an important part, and the use of warm and cold lighting is very important to the plot of the film. The way the subtitles can express the tone. If you add an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence, the whole sentence becomes different. For example, for some snack advertisements, they usually do this, which will make consumers have a greater desire to buy.
-symbolic codes：Symbolic code is a little harder to distinguish, usually expressed through repetition and emphasis. Such expressions will appear when symbolic code is used in some advertising slogans. But it is usually obvious and understandable.
-Cultural codes (referential codes): Not everyone understands that it is only representative of some particular era or time. People from different countries have different cultures, for example, New Year is a Chinese festival, fireworks, dumplings, red clothes, lion and dragon dances, etc. They are all symbols of Chinese New Year. When Chinese people see these, they will think of them.
Claude Lévi-Strauss a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology.
-Lévi-Strauss published a book in 1962 in which countries with different cultures did not speak the same language, but the stories in global history had a simple and stable structure. He believed that in all stories the relationship of opposites is structured, that God separates light and darkness, land and water, sky and sea. In the classic fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, the characters are completely opposite. For the binary oppositions of the media, in movies or some plots, there is always a distinction between good and evil, heroes will fight monsters, villains are also secondary characters, and there is a contrast between youth and maturity.
Tzvetan Todorov was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist.
Tzvetan Todorov was influenced a lot by the literary theorist Vladimir Propp from Russia. propp analyzes hundreds of Russian folktales. He found that narratives are shaped by certain types of actions. There are many different types of characters. For "hero" in two ways, one is that this character leads the plot development and has more important responsibilities, and the other is that they need to overcome their weaknesses. "The princess and the princess's father" princess is a reward for heroes who need to pass a certain level of difficulty. "The donor" This means that the hero gets some kind of special ability, and uses these to face the bad guys. "The helper" is a character who helps the hero get through tough times. "The dispatcher" is the one who guides the hero on a mission, usually at the beginning of the story. The character "The false hero" presents a bad image and brings out the status and character of a true hero. At the end of narrative, its true colors will also be revealed.
Steve Neale is an award-winning composer, conductor and pianist. With a degree in Film Scoring from the Berklee College of Music, Steve has written and produced music for film, video games, and live theater around the country.
He proposes repetition and difference, repeats themes that suggest the film in the film, and surprises the audience with surprise and suspense. The beginning and end of similar TV news are also very novel, and different genres can be judged through these details. For example, crime plots are usually interspersed into the narrative through the perspective of justice. Character-driven motifs refer to the audience's understanding of the film after seeing certain types of characters. In some science films, scientists are often the prototype of the film. Iconography is through special items, such as: clothing, setting, make up, or camera and editing style. In crime films, guns, police stations, and criminals are all obvious symbols. For audience targeting, different types of movies attract different audiences. The biggest consumers of romantic movies are women, who have more careful feelings. Based on the action of a sci-fi film, this appeals more to male audiences.
Gender is an important factor in representational effects. Women generally appear as victims. In crime dramas, sharp and emotionless male leaders lead the way.
Pride and Prejudice
in this film, it include actions code， semantic codes，cultural code and representational effects etc.
Many theories we have learned are used in this movie. At the beginning of the movie, the heroine wears plain clothes to read a book, and the book also looks very ordinary. This is an obvious symbolic code, which is expressed through clothes and books. The heroine's family environment. Show the life of ordinary people. When the camera enters the room, the decoration of the house is not so gorgeous, the walls are mottled, and the other girls in the family are wearing ordinary skirts, which is also a symbolic code. For the decoration of the house, the clothing of objects and characters can also be seen in the age of their lives. This is the culture code, when dancing was a popular event, and every girl was excited about the news.
When a movie has a genre, the story needs to revolve around this matter. For example, at the beginning of the movie, the mise en scene shows the heroine's character, and the high key lighting creates an independent, gentle and free image for the heroine. This kind of movie can show the theme at the beginning. Compared to a horror movie, the lighting, shots and sound are different.
For the beginning of my own film, I know how to use mise en sence and different theories to create a sense of atmosphere for the film, and to make the logic clearer, the time and place of the story and the plot are more suitable.
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