ITAP Week 6 Narrative

A story is the basic form of telling a linked series of events, either true or fiction that is usually a description of a journey that characters make. Stories can come from a many number of places such as the news that you have either watched on T.V or read in a newspaper, from the history of recorded events in the past also, from legend, which is a story pasted down for generations which people believe to based around real historical facts but can not be proved. In visual communication you tell a story through your work by thinking about who the target audience is, because nothing can appeal to all ages. Something that appeals to an adult won’t interest a child. Also, though the images you try to get across your message for example if you were advertising a Ford Fiesta you would want an image that would show how practical it is compared to a Lamborghini Murcielago where you’d want to show how powerful and fast it is.

Developing a narrative is taking the idea of original story or theme and developing it further. For example when you explore deeper into the meaning behind the ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ story you get a number of different interpretations such as rebirth, natural cycles (day and night, changing of the season) and sexual. An example of this is Tex Avery’s version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, which was released in 1943 called ‘Red Hot Riding Hood’. In this version of the story, Red Riding Hood is performer at a nightclub and the wolf is portrayed as someone who follows her and is obsessed with her. This gives a completely different angle from the way the traditional story is told, but keeping the same elements to make it a ‘Red Riding Hood’ story. Using alternatives to what people normally associate with things is very useful as a visual communicator because it can put an interesting twist on the obvious or modernise it so it is more relevant to the current time period such as, the latest version of Sherlock Holmes, on BBC one, is set in modern day London but the traditional, core elements of the story are the same as Sir Arthur Cannon Doyle wrote in his books.