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28 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education 2.6 Film Theory The common distinction between motion picture narratives is based on the fictional or documentary nature of the content. However, contrary to common belief, fictional stories and documentaries can be further divided into works possessing a story-telling narrative structure and so-called nonnarrative films. As narrative representations are medium-independent, the methods and approaches of narratology (such as reception aesthetics, genre theory or literary canon) can be extended to both motion picture and literary narratives. Similarly to literary narratives, a film spectator also engages with the narrative through the plot (syuzhet) and reconstructs the story (fabula). However, while literature is able to establish a chronological and causal order by linguistic means, film uses its own poetic features to establish the relations of space and time (Kovacs, 2002). Film is a performing artwork and as such its dramaturgical structure determines its impact-apparatus. Accordingly, the conventions of film narration are different from those of literature since not only verbal elements (i-e., monologues and dialogues) but also the visual architecture (e.g., planes, camera movements, montage, cuts, mis-en-scene elements, and image composition) and sound play a role in storytelling. The use of these features has a function in cinematic storytelling, but genres can also contribute to the reception of a work. Hierarchy is also present in the dramaturgical structure of the film. Events in a film follow a specific space-time unity which gives rise to the film’s plot. In films, there are elements which occur within (diegetic) and outside (nondiegetic) of the plot. For example, in a backstage musical the logic of the plot is that the main characters perform a musical stage number which represents a diegetic element. However, the general incidental music is used to express the mood of the plot. From a visual point of view, slowdowns, accelerations or intercut flashback elements are also elements taking place outside the plot (Kovacs, 2002). From an analytical point of view, the composition of the image is the smallest structural unit, and the largest is the overall narrative of the film. The compositions of images build the settings, montages of settings build scenes, scenes build situations, situations build acts, and acts build the narrative. In a plot, the scene is the smallest unit of action, the unity of which is provided by the triad of characters, setting, and plot. Scenes can be analyzed in terms of their role in the film narrative or in smaller dramaturgical units or themes within a scene. Scenes perform a turning or episodic function in the film narrative, and distinguishing between them helps to reconstruct the skeleton of the story. The larger unit of content in the film is the situation, which is made up of scenes and delimited by turns. A coherent set of situations is in turn called a sequence (Kovacs, 2009). Metz (1968) considered sequences
