Narrative Techniques

After missing out on a few of the media lessons, I decided I would take a look at what research they carried out whilst I was gone. It included further development on knowledge about narrative techniques in the media.

Here is what I discovered
There are different ways in which texts tend to tell the story. An example of this would be from a particular view point and here are two kinds of these:

• Omniscient narration- Like the definition of the word itself, this is narration when the audience has the opportunity to be "all seeing" and they know all of the action taking place, including dramatic irony when the audience knows more than the characters.
• Restricted narration- From the word restricted it is already clear that there are going to be limitations of some form. In this case it is that the story is only told from the point of view of one of the characters.Thus the audience is unable to find out any more than the characters themselves.

Another technique used by filmmakers is time manipulation and this is done in order to make a more interesting story line. There are many ways to create this effect. Mise-en-scene can be used to represent specific time periods, for instance period clothing for the characters to wear, or clock hands and calendars changing to create an illusion of time passing. This is particularly useful in short films; it allows producers to compress time on screen. It is critical that producers are consistent with continuity when showing time passing as it can easily become confusing and hard for the audience to follow therefore ruining the overall appeal of the short film. Some other available techniques are flashbacks and flash-forwards which show events from different perspectives. Tight deadlines additionally create suspense and tension within a plot therefore producers can manipulate audiences by doing so.  

Looking at resolutions in short films, the conventional approach is that there is always a resolution to the problem. An alternative approach to this would be that not all problems that occur have a solution, however this may lead to the audience feeling unsatisfied. Leaving problems unsolved can also lead to further short films or series thus can be successful if done well, as you then already have an audience waiting on the next production.