Narrative Theory

Narrative is the story that is being told. Narrative explores the conventions of; genre, character, form and time. There are four types of structures theorists use, the most common structure being used is linear structure this when there is a beginning, middle and end. Open structure are left to wonder what happens next and make sense of it (e.g Inception). Closed structure is a definite ending, it has a clear conclusion for the audience. Lastly, a circular structure is when the narrative begins at the end event (often with the climax), the audience are taking on a journey back where they started (e.g pulp fiction).
There are different theorists who use theory to explain narrative structure:
Barthes is one of the theorists, he describes narrative as a series of code that are read and interpreted by the audience. There are three different codes he uses. Firstly, the action code, this is where the audience knows and doesn't need explaining. Secondly, the enigma code, this is when there is something hidden from the audience. Lastly, the semic code where the audience recognise through connotation.
Another theorist is Levi-Strauss, he describes narrative as created by contrast conflict of binary opposites, examples of binary opposites would be love and hate, wealth and poverty- they work together to create the narrative.

Editing

So what is editing? Editing is changing the narrative and to manipulate your original ideas. It is part of the post production in making films/t.v. In many films/t.v, editing has changed to portray things in indifferent ways to create meaning for the audience. In scenes they use camera cuts to create certain effects. In horror films they like to use jump cuts this is because it builds up tension, creates shock and surprises the audience.
In class we watched 'supersize me', because of editing what we see is not actually what happens. In the scene we see his sick on the floor however we did not actually see it come out of his mouth. Scenes can be changed to change a characters action to manipulate the audience to create different meaning.

how can genre aid me in relation to brief?

Genre is very important because it will help me decide what type of film I am going to study and make. It will help me decide the conventions that makes the film effective and would be appealing to the audience.However there is no particular way to classify a film because genre is not fixed, it is constantly changing. You can get sub-genres which are different forms of the same genre and also get hybrid genres where two genres mixed together, this means I need to be careful with the target audience as it needs to appeal to a large audience and for them to like every aspect of the film I am going to make.