DocumentaryNarrative Theories

Importance of narrative structure in documentaries

•When we first started this project we did not understand the importance of this part of documentary.

•However it is as all documentaries follow one route to construct their preferred meaning.

• We even did audience research into what narrative theories the public want for our documentary.

•We then finally decided that we would have a quest structure however without a presenter. !

Propp’s narrative Theory

•This theory states that characters in programmes and even films, fit a certain subtitle.

•These include the hero, villain, the helper and more.

• For documentary this does fit perfectly into place but can be thought about when creating a documentary.

•For instance ‘the helper’ could be the person leading the documentary to reach the goal at the end.

•This theory states the classic notion about a story having a beginning middle and end.

•This very much relates to documentary as they usually have some sort of order that lead the audience into reaching the goal at the end

•This could be an event or information.

•A key feature for this would be title sequences and titles showing end of part one etc.

Todorov’s narrative theory

•This theory states most stories or any time line of events is taken through the eyes of a quest.

• In novel terms this the most classic way, and example of which being ‘The lord of the rings’.

• For documentary this is a common related theory, becoming increasingly popular with celebrity admiration.

•This is the theory that relates most to our

future documentary, most probably.

The quest narrative theory