Narrative

The narrative in a film is usually the story being told. While it will be different for every film a lot of films follow the same rough guidelines of the classic narrative system :

Beginning - Middle - End

Equilibrium - Disequilibrium - Equilibrium (resolution)

If you look more in depth at specific genres and there narratives you can notice huge similarities in a lot of films as well. An example of this would be the generic Hollywood blockbuster action film. These generally follow a narrative of :

Introduction to characters / locations - disequilibrium when something bad happens - Things get positive usually around the middle of the film - chaos which is worse than the original disequilibrium - Happy ending where everything is resolved and there is a restoration of moral order.

This seems to be the general plot line of the majority of blockbusters that I have seen. A briefer description of this would be something like :

Introduction - Disequilibrium - Resolution - Disaster - Equilibrium.

For my short film I personally think it will not be long enough to have a general narrative plan of numerous stages. I do how ever see that I will need to think quite hard about the different steps in my films plot as it develops before I can begin to film it.