Introduction

Disclaimer - These pages are not endorsed by the VCAA and are intented as a guide for the students that I teach. Reference should be made to the Study Design for Media which can be found here.

Narrative is the first outcome of Unit 3 in the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). Two feature length texts are studied. Genrally these two texts need to have some sort of abillity to be compared. A good starting point is to pick texts from the same genre but from different time periods. For example Singin in the Rain and Moulin Rouge have a very similar story stucture (both are musicals, each has a love triangle, each has a major change in the use of the main location - the film studio moving to sound/the changing of the Moulin Rouge from a brothel to a legitimate theatre). However, as the texts were made 50 years apart, there are substantial differences in their production methods and the difference in time will .)

A narrative is simply a story. Most of our language revolves around telling stories. Motion picture films have been in existence since the 1880s and since that time we have developed a language to expalin how those 'filmed texts' are built and interpreted by audiences. You have probably been watching filmed texts since soon after you were born, and those who studied Media in Year 10 will have had an introduction to this outcome. Broadly speaking we will be looking at three groups of elements that create the foundations of studying narrative.

This page gives basic explanations for terms you should be aware of with links to more detailed explanations and examples:

Narrative texts can be broken into three groups of elements Story, Production, and Audience.

Story Elements

These elements constitute the actual story. Generally these can be thought of as being what you would find in a printed novel. In fact a majority of feature texts are based on novels. Some of the skills learnt studying novels in English can be useful. You can find a list Story Elements here.

Production Elements.

These elements are ones which come from the actual making of the text. These can be sub-grouped into Pre-Production, Production, and Post Production. You can find a list of Production Elements here.

Audience Elements.

These elements relate directly to the people watching the text and the context or place and time where the text is viewed. You can find a list of Audience Elements here.