NARRATIVE THEORY

.Vladimir Propp (1895-1970) was a russian teacher after studying dozens Russian tales, he realized that almost everyone had asimilar narrative structure. The characters, different as they were,used to develop actions very similar in all stories. Propp defined "function" as the action of a character from the stand point of its significance in the development of the plot. The professor found  31 functions. A story may take them all or just some, but always features appear in the same order.


.Todorov (1939- ), franco-bulgarian philosopher, suggested a slightly more complicated description of narrative structure than the simple situation/ problem/ resolution structure. He posited five stages:
A. a state of equilibrium at the outset
B. a disruption of the equilibrium by some action
C. a recognition that there has been a disruption
D. an attempt to repair the disruption
E. a reinstatement of the equilibrium

.Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908- 2009) was a belgium-french anthropologist and ethnologist. He said than the human minds have certain characteristics that originate from features of the brain of Homo Sapiens. These common mental structures thatlead to people everywhere think in a similar way regardless ofsociety or of their cultural background. Among these universal mental characteristics are the need to classify: to impose order on aspects of nature, on the relationship of people with nature and the relationships between people. A universal aspect of classification is the opposition or contrast (Binary Opposition). God and devil, white and black, old and young, high and low, rich and poor, good and bad ...

.Minority Report_narrative structure

Conventional narratives follow the three act structure – initial situation/ equilibrium, a disruption, and resolution/ new situation. “Todorov suggested a slightly more complicated description of narrative structure than the simple situation/ problem/ resolution structure. 


Applied to Minority Report one might offer a structure as follows:
A. The Precrime system spearheaded by Anderton and Burgess is about to go national.
B. During a routine case Anderton sees himself appear on screen as a future perpetrator.
C. Anderton tries to cover his tracks but his colleagues soon discover the news of the Pre-Cogs’ predictions.

D. He flees and begins his quest to find the truth; meanwhile the full force of the criminal detection system is brought to bear against him.
E. he narrative is resolved with the exposure and destruction of Burgess, the winding up of the Precrime experiment, the reuniting of the Andertons and the freeing of the Pre-Cogs – Agatha and the twins..

About Vladimir Propp, Minority Report has a fairly conventional narrative structure though it does contain a multitude of enigmas and intrigue.

OPENING CREDITS

Catch Me if You Can - Enter the void - The Pink Panther (1963)

THE SOUND

The first projections of films were carried out at improvised sites with great sound pollution. Experiments were done to reduce or eliminate this and to focus attention on the stories, because the brain has a great ability to correlate what you see with what you hear, even if their origin is not common. They tried to lead actors to recite dialogues, but it was not practical, tried to create sound effects of noises main story (steps,beatings, shootings ...).

The most impressed was the accompaniment of live music, which previously had lived with fair performances, dance, puppetry, circus, cabaret, theatre ... Even try to build the sound through images.

Music is incorporated as the only extra sound element during projection, which meant a great advance for cinematic expression, to create the support, the thread of the stories. Most of the cinemas had no orchestra, so the musicians accompanied the films with flutes, organs ... Testing, testing, until the system Vitaphone (sound recording on a disc and sync with the film) to digital sound.

The first film Sonora was The Jazz Singer (1927) Alan Crosland. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_4O5bpvxAA

The sound film makes the silence speak. Signs disappear from the screens to make the characters through their own voice, make explicit their feelings, their emotions, we can even hear your thoughts. Now are the sound effects and music subordinate to dialogue?.

The sound has a spatial dimension. We know that the space of the action of the narrative is not limited to what we see on the screen. The sound can come from a character or a space object belonging to the history of film (diegetic), or outside, beyond what we see on screen (non-diegetic).

Here in this fragment of Wings of desire we have a example.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwzZvTJ5cHY

Sound also can represent time, in different ways, pairing with the image, we heard at the same time we see the sound source that produces it (synchronous sound). When sound is asynchronous, the result is quite disturbing but you can get another imaginative effects.