3. Narrative and non-narrative structures

Narrative and non-narrative structures used in Dollface and John smith's girl chewing gum

Doll face has a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. It starts off by the face wanting to be like the screen it sees it front of it, so it changes it self several times to look like the face on the screen. You can tell this is a beginning beacuse the scenes set so we know the main chracter trying to achieve a goal, and we can see what the goal is. The the middle is when the screen begins to strain it self to follow the screen that its tryin to pursue so it can copy the face. We can tell this is a middle because now the main character is in conflict- yet in this situation its with itself whether or not it should pursue its set out goal. The end is when the mechanism with the screen on it finally buckles and the screen breaks. Now this shows the resolution to the narritive story as the character made the decision to pursue its goal at the risk of dieing and in this narrative the director has made a point of killing the character to show that this goal was never achievable.

Yet in contrast, smiths girl chewing gum hasnt got any specific narritive structure. There are no main characters, so each character has their own short-term goals such as the pedestrians crossing the road or crowds of people queing to get in the cinema. Also theres no conflict involved as the director has imposed himself to be instructing whats to happen, consequently no one is going to disagree or go against what is being said. Additionally you could start watching at any part of the film because of the fly-on-the wall style used, if there were a narrative structure there would be cut-scenes not continuous filming.