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30 I Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
linked to processes related to visual (who sees and how? - ocularization),
auditory (who hears and how? - auricularization) and cognitive information
(who knows what? - focalization).
Bordwell (1985), from a cognitive psychology approach, argued that
the viewer’s understanding is supported by his or her own vision, hearing,
schemata, and hypothesis-making abilities on the one hand, and by the
causal architecture of the film narrative on the other. Branigan (1992), like
Bordwell, argued that the viewer relies on schemata to receive films, and
can only reconstruct the story from the linguistic references on the screen if
he or she has a prior set of schemata about the spatio-temporal dimension,
genre and stylistic signifiers of the narrative on the screen. These enable
the viewer to construct the world of the film narrative (diegetic space). The
narrative structure is a set of rules that organizes all the characters and events
of a story into a whole spatio-temporal and causal order. Fiizi describes the
narrative schema as
[...] an organisation of knowledge that the recipient has in advance and that plays
a decisive role in recognising, ordering, and remembering narrative patterns.
A narrative schema consists of the following components: (1) introduction of
the setting and characters (extract or prologue); (2) explanation of the facts
(orientation, exposition); (3) initial event; (4) emotional expression or statement
of purpose by the protagonist; (5) complications; (6) resolution; (7) reactions
to the resolution (epilogue) (Fuzi, 2006, p. 10).
In his narratological approach, Branigan (2013) argued that the story is
conveyed to the receiver through the signal system of the narration, who
cannot reconstruct the story without prior knowledge of the conventions of
the film’s two-dimensional signal system.
Grodal (1997) argued that the emotional impact of narration is also strongly
influenced by the genre expectations of the audience. As an example, he
cites a scene in which the hero falls into a trap, which may result in crying
if the viewer interprets it from a melodramatic perspective, laughter from a
comedic perspective, or a scream from a horror perspective.
The viewer understands the film narrative if he or she can interpret the
events of the plot as a story- regardless of the order in which these events
follow each other- and understand that the plot of the film can unfold in
several threads. However, when analysing the structure of the film narrative,
it is also necessary to take into account the fact that the general rules of film
narration are not valid across the entire audiovisual universe since the classical
narrative forms have been supplemented by alternative forms since the second
half of the 20" century. These forms can also be traced back to conscious
directorial choices, as directors, especially in postmodernity, deliberately
depart from the rules of classical film narration. It is also important to
note that many new narrative media have emerged in recent years, and the