This week we continued the studies of narrative via themes.
A summary of this week:
– Focus on the basics
– The Controlling Idea
– Trim it Down
- Theme as Unity (Alfted Hitchcock’s Rear Window)
- Theme as Motifs (Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane)
- Theme in Visuals & Dialogues (Saving Private Ryan)
We can develop themes through conflicts (Blade Runner), or the theme of religious motiff through The Virgin Suicides and the anti-theme of Far From Heaven about visibility and invisibility.
In the narrative exercise, I used Freeway (1996) as my example.
Some of the important themes in the film are:
1) Helplessness
2) Troubled people and how Red Riding Hood over comes them (mum, stepdad, big bad wolf, herself)
3) Some visual theme is referring back to Red Ridding Hood such as using red as a colour, and the final scene of Red Ridding Hood visiting her grandmother)
4) The anti-theme of needing to be the victim in order to go against being a victim
Here is my edit of the film:
For my personal research this week, I look into personal narrative. This video of the speaker J Christian Jensen using personal narrative and emotion to accomplish things.
I also found this PowerPoint slides of The Elements of Personal Narrative (link) that I thought is useful for refreshing what we learned in semester 1.
All in all, while I still struggle with the abstract concept of themes, as I research and reflect more upon what I learned, I hope to understand them better and to apply them to the upcoming projects.