Narration & Story Telling - Week 2A

In today's session, we started exploring different techniques of storytelling and narration. One of the first topics that we discussed was whether machines are able to write stories. At first, one would think that it is possible given that Artificial Intelligence supposedly copies the brain's mechanism and can, as well, process things like an actual human mind. However, after watching a video in which a machine reads different popular scripts for Sci-Fi movies and tries to write a story for a film, my opinion on the subject changed completely.

There are many things that are really "weird" and random in the short film, Sunspring. The dialogue is so complicated and it doesn't make sense, at some points, at all. The AI apparently, used the most basic and most used phrases from the movies that it analyzed. For example at this part, where the two main humans are arguing, the dialogue has almost no context. 

Sunspring Script found here.

Reading and watching this made me think how important is the human touch in a story. Even if technology is rapidly developing these days, humans can't be replaced yet. (I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing).

Moving on, we talked a bit more about storytelling and how folk and fairy tales affected the way we narrate stories today. But the question is, why do we share stories? What is the purpose of that? There are multiple answers to that question and I believe none of them is wrong. Some people during the session said to entertain, to share an experience or even sell something but I would say that stories are what brings one close to another. It builds the communication with other human beings and it helps us develop and learn, either from another person's triumphs or mistakes. 

During the same part of the lecture, we talked about The Six-Word Story. Honestly, I had never heard of it and when James explained it to us, I sort of panicked. It seemed like a really difficult process, and especially for a Monday morning, but nevertheless, we still tried to create our own stories with this structure. In order for us to understand the purpose of this technique, James suggested visiting different sites with stories following the same idea. The first site that popped up was, obviously, Six-Word Story. At first, I didn't think I was going to get any inspiration, because the latest posts shared on the page were from 2014.  However, I was so wrong! The stories in the site were absolutely incredible and I was so shocked with how a six-word sentence can give you a whole story! So after I went through many pages, we were given fifteen minutes to complete the task, I started writing my own Six-word stories. I wrote four overall, but I can't say that I was satisfied with all of them. My favourite was: 

6 people. 1 gun. 5 bullets. 

A bit dramatic and too much, but this is what came to my mind at that time. I wrote a few more, but they were either really dramatic or really romantic, there was no in-between. (I think I was really affected by the stories I read). 

After the Six-Word Structure, we talked about the narrating technique that mostly Disney is using these days. From the short film we did in the previous semester in Sound and Camera,  I was familiar with the Ken Adams' structure or the Pixar Prompt since we used it to write the script. At first, I really thought it wasn't going to work because it honestly, looks awfully simple! My question was, why would a structure used for children's stories work for an actual drama film? However, I was once again proven wrong and it seemed like I really underestimated it. Trying to write a script for a short film or even an actual movie, using this technique proved to be simple and easy and it also gives space to the writer to add twists and many details. During the time we were given, I wrote this short story which now that I'm reading it again, It reminds me of the average American family movies from the 2000s:

Overall, the session gave us a lot of information about the different ways we can tell stories and how important narration is for creating a comprehensible movie. I can say with certainty that the Six-Word Structure was the one that surprised me the most and so far, is my favourite exercise that we have done in class. What I would prefer is to watch more visual examples in class, for example watching the first clip from Mad Men, really got me into the lesson and gave me an idea of what is going to follow. 

In the next post, I'm going to get into the details of Visual Storytelling which took place during the same session. 

Thank you for reading, see you in the next post :)

Intro Photo found here.