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Narrative Structure and Style in Film
Rating: 4.8 out of 5(17 ratings)
118 students
Created byDavey Morrison
Last updated 12/2024
English

What you'll learn

  • Move beyond three-act structure to more specific and more diverse forms of storytelling
  • Better understand the visual language filmmakers use to tell stories onscreen
  • Become familiar with a variety of literary traditions and how they have appeared and evolved onscreen
  • Gain a deeper appreciation for film and develop a broader set of tools to tell your own stories onscreen

Explore related topics

Course content

14 sections • 14 lectures • 8h 36m total length

  • Three-Act and Basic Aristotelian Story Structure51:18

    In this lecture, we review the basics of three-act and Aristotelian story structure. We'll talk in detail about Steven Spielberg's E.T., the extra-terrestrial -- you don't need to have seen the film to follow the discussion, but I highly recommend it!

    And, if you want to dig a little deeper...

    Here are some more recommended films and books related to this week's topic. The world is so full of a number of things -- here are a few of them!

    Recommended Weekly Film: Your Name

    Additional Viewing: Rear Window; The Castle of Cagliostro; The General; Rio Bravo; Alien; Get Out; Godzilla Minus One; The Holdovers; The Fabelmans; Parasite; The Old Man and the Gun; Goodfellas; Near Dark; An Angel at My Table; Cleo From 5 to 7; The Babadook; It’s a Wonderful Life; Fantastic Mr. Fox; The Iron Giant; Make Way For Tomorrow; Back to the Future; Shaun of the Dead; Petite Maman; American Movie; The Thin Blue Line; Bright Leaves; O.J.: Made in America; Poker Face

    Reading: The Poetics, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Making a Good Script Great, The Tools of Screenwriting, Story, Screenplay, The War of Art, The Artist’s Way, Bird by Bird

Requirements

  • A love of movies!

Description

In this class, we'll be diving into a wide range of different kinds of films and different modes of cinematic storytelling. There are many ways of telling stories, and learning more about these different traditions can be a little bit like becoming multilingual – it makes you more film literate and it opens you up to a much greater variety of possibilities as a filmmaker, screenwriter, and film appreciator. In each of the following fourteen lectures, we'll be looking at a different tradition of cinematic storytelling, ranging from comedy to tragedy to Hollywood blockbusters to art films, analyzing how each of these different modes works and how they frequently interact and overlap with one another. We'll also be exploring some of the traditions in literary, art, and theater history that developed before or in tandem with these different approaches to film storytelling. So buckle up, and let's get ready to watch some movies!

Topics covered:

  • Three-act and basic Aristotelian story structure

  • Myth, archetype, and fairy tale cinema

  • Picaresque narrative

  • Tragedy

  • Old Comedy: Parody, spoof, and satire

  • New Comedy: Romantic comedy, commedia dell'arte, farce, and screwball

  • Social realism and naturalism

  • Melodrama

  • Brechtian epic storytelling

  • Ensemble storytelling

  • Expressionism

  • Dadaism, surrealism, and naturalism

  • Absurdism

  • Transcendental style and slow cinema

Who this course is for:

  • Anyone who enjoys or creates or would enjoy creating movies

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