This is Vladimir Propp. In the 1920's, Propp analysed a series of old Russian folk stories, and came up with many theories about there structure. These theories have widely been applied to many films and movies (particularly major Hollywood blockbusters).
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| Vladimir Propp, |
One of his main theories was about 'Narrative Function'. Propp stated that there were 31 functions that most films contained in an exact order. I'm not going to write down all narratemes the for sake of our sanity, however you can find a comprehensive list of them here.
Propp also indicated character categories that he believed all fictional characters derived from. These were;
The Villain, The Donor, The Helper, The Princess, The Dispatcher, The Hero and The False Hero.
Having watched many typically Hollywood films, I can certainly understand where Propp and those who have interpreted his work are coming from. You only need to look at a top grossing film like the Toy Story 3 to see these 31 laws applied rigorously. The characters are also blatantly relatable to these categories,
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| The false hero & villain from Toy Story 3 |
The Villain Lotso
The Donor Dolly, Telephone.
The Helper Buzz Lightyear
The Princess Jessy
The Dispatcher Andy
The Hero Woody
The False Hero Lotso
I believe our film tries in an essence to defy this convention of mainstream film. Being a short film, no one is expecting us to fit all of Propp's 31 narratemes into 5 minutes. That would be insane. However I do believe that due to the neutral nature of the film, Propps theories on character are obsolete in this particular project. We wanted to make our film as simple as possible, so as to properly signify to relaxed state of mind the man is in, so these conventions really aren't applicable.
If we were to make a longer film on the same premise, perhaps Propp would become more relevant, however at the moment, we are not planning to really involves Propps theories on narrative in our production.
PM
Six String Studios
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