Children of Men in the style of Brendan Dawes’ Cinema Redux project. Each row represents 30 seconds of the film, one frame per second.

The plan is to process all films used in my thesis and present them in this way - a fantastic way to analyse light levels and use of colour. For some reason, the script does not always work and may need a little more tinkering…

Beginning Film Studies
Andrew Dix

Following a meeting with Dr David Butler, I have been reading chapter 4, Film and Narrative, in Andrew Dix’s book Beginning Film Studies. The hope was to figure out how a film is built up, how you move from one ‘stage’ to another and what important characters, events etc. there are.

I am hoping to learn what stages a dystopian film is split up in and apply these stages to my urban studies. Finding this out will, however, require a little bit of work. 

David’s first suggestion was to draw a graph similar to the one below. By studying the situation of a character and mapping it on a graph (positive/negative on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal) it is relatively easy to see how the film is built up. Many characters can be plotted on the same graph to allow comparison.

His second suggestion was to look at works such as the Cinema Redux Project by Brendan Dawes (the film Vertigo shown below). Using this method, one can easily analyse the use of colour (and mood?) in the film. Will dystopian films be black/brown and dirty?

Another way of mapping the narrative could be (I don’t know if it’s even possible!) to draw the narrative lines as roads on a map; follow the twists and turns, detours and dead ends to create a ‘city plan’ of the film.

Dix writes in his book about Vladimir Propp, a Russian formalist who wrote about film and narrative. He developed his own theory relating to Russian fairytales and condensed all stories to contain seven spheres of action (characters) and 31 functions (major events/storylines). The spheres of action include:
- the Villain
- the Dispatcher
- the Helper
- the Princess (and her father!)
- the Donor
- the Hero
- the False Hero
It may be interesting to see if these characters still apply to dystopian films and what impact these constrictions may have.

The ‘standard’ narrative is said to be equilibrium – disequilibrium – equilibrium restored. This may not necessarily be true for dystopian films.

Dix also mentions, interestingly, that a film played backwards can produce an almost utopian experience where people are resurrected, wounds heal and the minerals used to create the bombs are returned safely to the ground.

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 Dix, A. (2008) Beginning Film Studies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.