Does the perspective of narration alter the form?

Link: https://vimeo.com/123546837

In video, narration can be found through many aspects including but not limited to the way shots are ordered and presented, as well as how sound is manipulated. However the most traditional form of narration is speaking conducted by a narrator. Art in The Streets features a first person perspective narrator in the form of an interview with a local graffiti artist in Los Angeles. The graffiti artist speaks of his passion for his art work, which comes across in a relatively boastful manner. I began to think about whether the content of the interview was reliable and if a first person account of events is more trustworthy. Extrapolating from this, I start to think about what a third person perspective might do to influence the form of the narrative. For this reason, this sketch presents two contrasting examples of narration from a first person perspective, as well as a third person perspective.

Normally, if somebody is to tell a story about himself, they have the opportunity and natural tendency to be biased and exaggerate. Conversely, the third person perspective involves a distant narrator telling the story, which is conventionally more likely to be more accurate. So in regards to the case study, the form of the narrative is structured around the content of the interview. This means that although the interviewee may appear a suitable character to narrate, through the first person perspective the content can be distorted and reliability is lost. Without reliability, the narrative threads become loose as the narrative form is structured around bias.

To illustrate my point as clearly as possible in the sketch, I chose use a different script for each perspective so that the exaggerated differences between the two perspectives could not only illustrate the potential difference between first and third person, but also highlight the unreliability of the first person perspective.