Form and Narrative Structure

Form is one of the most basic elements in film. In the simplest terms, form signifies the relationship between the parts of the commercial. There are various ways in which these parts can connect, which we will discuss here.

For starters, there are formal expectations, or the pattern in which the creator reveals the commercial to us. In this case, we have a simple ABAB format--a couple is trying to initiate sex, a couple encounters a mishap. Lather, rinse, repeat. This similarity and repetition brings us to another aspect of film form--the motif.

Motifs occur when elements within the film repeat themselves. It can be countless aspects of the film--a color scheme, a place, a character trait. Within this short, 30-second commercial, we have more than one example:

• color scheme (soft tones, mostly blues and whites) -- we'll address this further in another blog
• clumsy characters (injury, things breaking, stumbling)

But repetition and similarity, of course, would get dreadfully boring without a little bit of change. In this case, the director has chosen to alter the pattern by changing both the location, the time of day and the people involved.While the scenes are different, the scenarios are the same--a variation is known as parallelism. There are no direct causal connections between scenes, but their experiences create the relationships between them.

Our PSA begins with a hard opening (no pun intended).

Our commercial begins with a hard opening--bringing the viewer straight into the action, with a couple in the bedroom about to disrobe. A soft opening, on the other hand, would have led us slowly to this moment in time--perhaps the couple pulling up to the house in a vehicle, then going inside, having conversation, etc. For the purpose (not to mention time factors) of this commercial, a hard opening was the better choice of form to communicate the story to the audience in both an entertaining and efficient manner.

Emotion, both represented and felt, can have formal implications. Within this PSA, we see representations of romance juxtaposed with a sometimes unsexy truth of the awkwardness of sexual situations. The emotions represented--arousal, pleasure, embarrassment--then generate a emotional response from the audience--humor and understanding through relatability.

Form also contributes significantly to the meaning and overall message of the commercial, which, in our case, is the persistence of sexual desire despite awkwardness, compared with a need for persistence in the use of contraception. There are multiple levels of form as meaning within the PSA:

• Referential meaning – meaning that the audience understands from applying prior personal, real-world experience. We've all had those awkward moments, in most or some of these situations, and we all still power through to the good stuff.
• Explicit meaning – can be see as the overall "point" of the commercial. Here, our message is spreading awareness about the options for birth control. This meaning is explicit in the voice-over narration at the end of the commercial, telling you exactly what the intention of the montage of couples is meant to be.
• Symptomatic meaning (ideology) – a meaning that carries traces of a society's values. Our commercial clearly does not condemn these couples for their sexual exploits. Our society promotes a woman's right to a healthy and happy sex life, and part of that is responsibility to play an active role in their reproductive health. It should be commended, however, that the PSA doesn't make a distinct plea to either the male or female--implying an equal distribution of responsibility by each person engaging in sexual activity to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.

Next comes narration.Narration is how the plot distributes story information to achieve certain effects. The two essential factors we'll discuss are the range of the story and the depth of the story.

Range deals with how much information the viewer's are given about the story. When we see and hear more than any of the characters in the story can see or hear, this is called an unrestricted range. When we are limited to what the characters are seeing and experiencing, the range is restricted.

Within each shot of our commercial, we are restricted, seeing and hearing what the characters see and hear. But then the scenes change, and the characters within the scenes change. We get an inside look of all these couples trying to get it on--one couple is not aware of another couple--but we are. They don't see all the awkward moments presented in a montage that reveal the story and the effect the director intended. Moreover, they do not hear the voice-over narration that gives us even more information about the story. This means overall, our range of the story is unrestricted.

Depth refers to the level of knowledge the viewer has about the characters within the story. If we know the thoughts of one character, or all the characters, or experience the story through point-of-view or sound perspective, the depth of information is subjective. But if we cannot experience anything as one or more of the characters would experience an event, our depth of information is objective--as it is in our unplanned pregnancy PSA.

BELOW:

Please Me Aesthetically's Film Form and Narrative Structure