Narration and Dramatic Structure in a Digital Environment
(original title "Berättande och dramatisk struktur i en digital miljö")
Summary of seminar by Pierre Gander
Note: this summary is quick and unfortunately not as complete as one would
want.
One-hour seminar with
Per Persson
and
Björn Thuresson, October 22, 1997
at
CID/IPLab,
NADA, KTH,
Stockholm, Sweden.
Per Persson is a PhD student at Film Studies, Stockholm University.
His interest is how the viewer constructs the film experience, with focus
on the cognitive processes. Björn Thuresson is a PhD student at Film Studies,
Stockholm University and CID, where he is involved in the project Digital Worlds.
The presentation aimed to show important elements of narrative in the form
of a set of tools which can be used to analyze and design narrative
presentations in digital environments, for example, multimedia. The speakers
thought that digital presentations might be improved by taking these tools
into account.
Per Persson started by giving a presentation of narrative. The aim was not
to give a definition, but rather to supply a set of tools with which narratives
could be studied. He started by noting that the narrative is something that
does not exist as an object, but is constructed as a result of an audience
experiencing an outside text (a stimuli). There are always
constructive/interpretative process involved in narrative experience, in which
the audience can be more or less active. Persson then presented his set of
tools, of which the two first are considered more central to narratives than the
others.
- Psychological causality. This is central to narrative. In narratives,
there are observable behavior on the one hand, and what goes in characters'
minds on the other, termed the inner and outer landscape, respectively. States
in characters' minds (intentions, plans, beliefs, etc.) cause characters to
act, to produce observable behavior.
- Dramaturgy. This element is also central to narrative. The most
basic form is the three parts of a narrative: a beginning (introduction,
stability), a middle (conflict, instability), and an end (resolution, again
stability).
- Spatiality. This feature is not central to narrative. Spatiality
means how locations, objects, and people are related spatially to each other. A number
of conventions have been established to signal spatial relations to the audience.
For instance, in film, characters direction of gaze, and head movements followed
by a cut and a new location are used establish a relation of proximity of two
nearby locations.
- Temporality. This is not central to narrative. This means simply
that things happen in a certain order.
- Metaphor. This feature is not central to narrative. A metaphor
transfers knowledge from one domain to another. Metaphors can be seen as a way
of structuring the world and our thinking (reference to Lakoff & Johnson was made).
- Emotions. Besides the above features, which deal with the cognitive
parts of the experience, there is also emotion, which is on another level of
description.
Persson then showed how these elements where used or not used in three examples
of multimedia products: one company presentation, one learning application, and
a game.
Björn Thuresson started by giving an overview of dramatic structure, giving
examples from Aristotle and the "classic Hollywood model". He presented nine
features of narrative, taken from the Alfred Hannequin's book "The Art of
Playwriting" which he proposed to be used in analyzing and designing multimedia
productions (these are unfortunately missing from this summary, but can be found
in the mentioned book).
Some personal comments on the seminar.