Ordering events in film

•What is the classic structure for the way a story is told on film?

Start, middle, and end

•What is the traditional system by which the main events in a film are ordered?

Chronological or linear

•What terms can we use to describe this pattern or order?

The start is called equilibrium, nothing happens but characters are introduced. Then we have a crisis were we move from the equilibrium to high tension. Then we have the climax, and at the end we have a happy ending were the characters are at a better situation than at the beginning.

•How are events ordered in the early scenes of ‘Psycho’?

Marion is at a hotel with her boyfriend and they cannot get married because they don’t have enough money. She goes to her office and gets money to put in the bank. She goes to her house instead than the bank and she steels it as she runs away with it.

•Are all films always ordered in this way? Find examples where the events are NOT ordered in this way?

No, sometimes there are flashbacks, example; Harry Potter, momento, slum dog millionaire.

•Why do you think a director would choose this approach to the ordering of events?

To mess around with the audience mind but trust there will be sense to it. To do it predictable, and create interest and tension to it.

•What is the chronology in Pulp Fiction (1994)?

The chronology in pulp fiction is not linear.

• Look at the sheet to see the main events rendered in chronological order (fabula)

Is this the order used in the film?

What is the order in which these events appear in the early part of ‘Pulp Fiction’

4(a), 2(a), 5, 1, 6, 2(B), 3, 4(b)

• Draw a timeline. Can you see a pattern?

•How does this change in the order of events affect the film’s cause/effect logic?

It doesn’t follow a chronological effect as there is a break in the scenes between cause and effect; normally it is cause and then effect.

•What do you think is the effect on the audience?

The effect on the audience would be more interest, curiosity, engagement, confusion, don’t understanding.

•The narrative ordering of a film plot (NOT its chronology) is known as the sujet (see Markham Film blog for full definition)

-          So the fabula is the ‘raw material’ of a story in chronological order

-          The sujet is the way a story is then organised by the director on film.

So how would you describe the sujet of Pulp Fiction? 

There is a pattern which isn’t too obvious, as it changes times between scenes.

•What impact does the complexity of its sujet (narrative order) have on the audience? What risks is the director taking if he presents a film with a complex sujet?

The audience of Pulp Fiction would be adults as it is a little complicated to understand and requires thinking. The director must make sure the complex sujet isn’t too complicated as that could lead to confusion and the public may not understand the movie, and if they don’t understand it they wont like it, they might also misinterpret it.

•  How would you re-construct the sujet of the film so that we don’t simply follow

the fabula but we can still make sense of what’s going on?

We could start by the end of a film were things are completely changed in the characters life’s and then come back to the beginning so the audience would wonder what has happened and would be more interested in the movie.