In this lecture we were taught about narrative and the pervasiveness of story. It was opened with a clip of the Princess Bride and an explanation of how we apply the lessons we learn early in our lives to later in our lives and surround ourselves with stories, but what are stories and narrative? Narrative can be anything  really i.e. a diary and are run through causality which means progression through effect. Causality allows for character development, a plot and a resolution. We were introduced to the idea that character development takes time. To develop a character you must present a number of events/responses he makes. Causality allows a character to emerge from a blank canvas through their reactions to certain scenarios. The plot is the skeleton of the story while the resolution leaves the viewer feeling a certain way. One quote in particular stood out to me,  from the mouth of Robert Mckee “The stuff of story is alive but intangible”(Robert Mckee, Story, p. 135).

Following this discussion we broke into pairs and mapped different movies according to emotional highs/lows and then according to character prominence. Me and Corey selected Star Wars: A New Hope, and thought that the beginning and middle were the most emotional parts with Luke’s family dying and then Obi-Wan dying. The death star being destroyed at the end was not as emotionally stirring to us, although it was still inspiring as Luke did this for Obi-Wan. Luke was prominent for almost all the film, compared to Obi-Wan, Leia, Han Solo or Chewbacca. A number of lines were drawn on a graph by different groups to show where the emotional highs were. They tended to be at the resolution and closer to the start.

By selecting a genre, you are setting up expectations and conventions. These may be used to trick or fulfil the audience. We were asked whether there is such a thing as a non-narrative and shown a film seemingly without a story simply depicting moving bodies. In my opinion, these still had clear causes and effects in them and a beginning, middle, and end.