STORY STRUCTURE 2 - ALTERING TIME

ALTERING STRUCTURE AND TIME

A large part of storytelling has to do with what your audience knows and when you let them know it. A great advantage to changing the structure of a story is the freedom you have in dishing out the plot in the best order that suits the telling. Another aspect of story structure is how it can effect the audience's perception of time. Read over the optons below and consider one that enhances or underscores themes that are already apparent in your film.

 

Rearranging your narrative order:

Starting at the End: Revealing the consequences of a situation and then working backwards to reveal events leading up to them forces the audience to navigate with limited context.

Starting at the Middle: Possibly jumping back to the beginning and then finishing at the end can create a feeling of being suspended in time.

Broken Sequence: moving from scene to scene with no apparent order tends to evoke a dream-like progression.

Story Within a Story:  The opening scene often uses the trope of a storyteller to frame the events of another story.  This can continue like layers of an onion.

 

Assignment:  Consider the options discussed in class and look for ways to apply one these concepts to your current story beats. (9-16 Panels) . Choose an approach that best suites or enhances the storytelling for your audience. Major plot points should be established with a clear visual flow making good use of the camera frame to tell your story. Use clear readable drawings. Utilize existing drawn beats when appropriate, adding or removing drawings to enhance and clarify your storytelling

 

Workflow:

Rearrange your existing story beats in Storyboard Pro until you like the order in which things unfold.

Changing the order without sufficient panels can be disorienting, so add new beats or transitional drawings to clarify the storytelling.

Adjust the audio accordingly.

Export Movie (1920 x 1980 H264) and submit to @DROPBOX.

 

Naming: 

simpsonB_structure_moonlightSonata.mp4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stephan Leeper/Central Michigan University 2020