Creating Visual Narratives:

Moving image narratives have been moving audiences for more than one hundred years. The conventions
and styles used to create meaning were sometimes borrowed from the stage or radio drama. At other times
visual styles of storytelling had to be invented. Having grown up reading the television current audiences are
so adept at interpreting visual narratives that these storytelling mechanics almost seem invisible. While these
mechanics might be invisible to audiences they cannot remain invisible to media inventors and storytellers
because while reading television might be second nature; writing, shooting and editing moving image into
understandable narratives is not intuitive.

Creating films and television programs suffers from the chicken and egg syndrome in the sense that one
must acquire some basic technical skills before anything shows up on the screen. At the same time some
conceptual ideas must be grasp before those images can be arranged in a way will make sense to an audience.
The tension between these two areas of knowledge makes learning to tell visual narratives a cyclical process of
taking three technical steps forward and then taking two steps back to fill in the holes discovered in your
storytelling knowledge; and vise versa.

Writers, directors and producers must pull back the curtain of movie illusion and understand the building
blocks and connecting mechanics of visual storytelling. One of the best means of doing this is viewing and
reviewing the best examples of the many varying styles of film and television. This text will introduce you to
this method of study and give you some basic techniques for analysis. However, the storytelling business is
constantly in metamorphosis and hopefully such analysis will become a lifelong enterprise of study and growth.

As with many areas of life, the learning of concepts and

techniques often involves a loss of innocence. This can be
especially devastating for those film buffs who have entered
the field because they’ve thoroughly enjoyed being an
audience member. After pulling back the curtain to reveal
the fact that the magic of Oz really consists of relatively
small humans pulling little levers, the movie going
experience loses some of it’s luster. Those bright colors and
moving shapes on the silver screen may not dazzle like they
used to.

Recapturing some of that initial joy and wonder may require employ a technique common to the theater
going experience, that of suspending one’s disbelief. If one’s knowledge begins to hinder the narrative a film
and media students may need to purposefully “suspend their disbelief” and throw themselves into the make-
believe experience. It is also a good idea to suspend any critical commentary if your viewing a show with
friends . . . that is if you want to be invited to go to the movies with friends in the future. Most non-film-major
do not enjoy a running technical commentary during the cinema experience. So upon that first viewing
suspend you movie knowledge and enjoy film and television they way they were intended; as an overwhelming
dream that unfolds before you eyes. Later, re-watch the show with your critical facilities fully engaged to learn
as many concepts and techniques as you can.

Visual Aesthetics: Philosophy and Politics

One of the first discoveries to be made when beginning to analyze the techniques of visual storytelling
is that there are two major storytelling styles that are different in both appearance and philosophy. From
near the beginning of visual arts there seems to have grown a debate about how images best communicate
ideas about human existence. In one camp we have the realists. They claim an art that most closely mimics
reality has the best chance of persuading our hearts and minds to view the world a certain way. The anti-
realists go by a number of different names but most of these styles believe that realism generally has little
potential to reveal anything new or significant about the human condition, and prefer to experiment with
out-of-the-box perspectives.

Hollywood realism is one film version of this aesthetic philosophy. Settings, characters and plots are
designed to be psychologically believable. Even fantasies and science fiction films are crafted on existing
myths of science so that they seem plausible. Time in film realism seems to flow continuously and
generally flows forward. While film time does not correspond to continuous real time, film realism’s time
does have a psychological continuity that makes it seem to unfold chronologically and realistically.

Most storytelling techniques taught in film and television educational programs over the past decades in
the US follow this realism tradition. Concentrating on continuity editing these courses focus on
maintaining screen direction, recording master establishing shots and avoiding continuity errors (much
more on this in the Continuity Techniques chapter). The philosophy of this school of art supposes that if
audiences believe these filmed narratives are real and vicariously identify with the characters in them, then
the inherent lessons on morality and social relationships will be penetrate and stick in our mind’s cognitive
core.

Does non-realism
communicate:
more, less or just
differently?

Opposite the realists one finds the visual non-realists who go by many different names such as
expressionists, impressionists, cubists, modernists, the avant garde and so on. Although relatively few of
these various anti-realists would claim that their visual aesthetic is politically motivated a close analysis that
peels away the layers and reaches the core philosophy reveals that they are really revolutionaries. They are
revolutionary in the sense that these artists believe that realistic art often supports the status quo.
Historically, I think that you’d find the vast majority or realism has supported authority, capitalism, and
patriarchy and in general realism has supported the world that is rather than portrayed a world that could be.
Even when realism adopts hero movies that envision an ideal and romantic world that could be . . . these
fantasies are nevertheless reflect a very traditional world where the male hero saves the beleaguered
community and marries the girls who will spend her life barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

The non-realist aesthetic argues for a breaking apart the meta-narrative of realism. In other words,
adherents to this perspective might likely argue that simply putting Laura Croft in as the female lead in an
action adventure narrative really doesn’t change the narrative much. It’s still a story about power and
conquest and has a girl acting like a guy and possibly using her skin-tight feminine charms to increase her
powers. Revolutionary expressionists would argue that creating a truly new female action adventure hero
would require abandonment of traditional male motifs. Fragment it. Distort it. Rearrange it, and in the case
of movies disrupt the temporal flow.
 European films, starting as early as the German
impressionists, have nurtured a tradition of
cinematic non-realism. Only occasionally does
the aesthetic break through on American big
screens. Pulp Fiction, Memento and the recent
film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind are
newer American films that call into question our
easy enjoyment of Hollywood’s cause-and-
effect realism where the good hero by self-
discipline, sacrifice and a little super-human
effort wins the day. As audiences attempt to
read the protagonist of Memento as a traditional
hero they are shocked that our traditional
interpretive tendencies have had us rooting for
the wrong hero all along.

Although this style is largely absent from the big screen narrative, the fragmentation and disruptive
revolutionary style often reveals itself in America’s music industry. The music scene with its close alliance
with youthful rebellion has embraced visual non-realism in the form music video. Throughout the 1980s
the music videos pioneered fast-paced and fragmentary montage. These videos often rejected the invisible
camera and opted for shaky hand-held shots that called attention to the technology producing the televisual
reality. Gone was the chronological time of the ballad where the narrative flowed smoothly and
continuously forward to the expected conclusion. Instead the group singing a single song might suddenly
switch outfits multiple times suggesting the music video is created from many fragments of different
performances.

These and many other impressionistic techniques that evoke

understanding through mood and intuition caught on and eventually
began creeping into other video venues. Advertising seemed
particularly compatible with the fragmentary non-realism style.
Rather than continuing to struggle with stuffing a complete logical
argument into a 30 second spot, advertisers found that fragmentary
associations of fun, laughter, health and so on were equally as
effective as the former realistic (and logical) arguments such as,
“This improved bar of soap will solve most of life’s major problems
starting with ring around the collar.”

From music videos and advertisements, some of these non-real techniques crept into mainstream
movies, but usually only for brief moments and most often only to serve the larger realism narrative rather
than undercut it. A psychological montage to express a character’s mindset, or a chase-scene montage to
put the viewer in the middle of frenetic action momentarily break the rules of time and space to give us an
“unreal” experience but these momentary departures are aimed at enhancing the overall realism narrative.
In other words, in a realism film about drug addict’s journey, a director might find it effective to hint at the
drugged out experience of glorious star filled night with an abstract impression of stars rather than trying to
simulate the real thing. No. It wouldn’t give us more information than communicating the exact color
temperature of specific stars in our galaxy, but an expressionistic animated painting might be more effective
in capturing either the awe or terror experienced when a drug induced high witnesses God’s cosmos.

Not only have these real and non-real forces made themselves felt in the fictional dramas, but they
exerted influence in the documentary and news worlds as well. Traditional news usually assumes the
realism aesthetic. Under current journalistic codes it is assumed that the objective reporter is merely out
there in the field recording and reporting what is real. The reporter’s job is to be a liaison, explaining a
complicated technical world to a 5th grade level audience. As a result you have simplified stories that relate
simple causes, and propose simple solutions that primarily reinforce the world, as we know it. Even in its
most daring forms (like 60 Minutes) television journalism only seeks out the obviously evil villains in
society and doesn’t go so far as to shatter the reality by considering that the whole system might be corrupt
or misguided.

There are some forms of nonfiction television that take on more of a non-real feel. Obviously handheld
shaky-cams, and jump-cut juxtapositions--techniques often pioneered in the realm of music videos--are
used to call attention to the fact that the traditional news is not objective realism but rather a highly crafted
visual argument.
Tabloid and entertainment journalism seem happy to
embrace this manufactured news notion. Like the
supermarket papers toting a mother giving birth to a two-
headed alien baby, the televisual tabloids use the non-realism
visual style as a tongue-in-cheek device informing audiences
that the two-headed baby is fun but highly manipulated visual
hoax. The turn of the century fad of reality television often
utilized editing techniques of jump cuts and juxtapositions to
create raw impressions or to force unnatural associations
rather than convince us of authentic realism.

This ongoing tension between aesthetic/philosophical/political schools of thought should provoke some
interesting conflict in the Christian student’s training to become a media professional. One on hand, we
need to become competent professionals who know how to emulate the visual codes and technical practices
of status quo realism. Like artists of old we must continue to believe that choices by characters in our
narrative have real consequences in a real world. In other words, we must be careful about degenerating
into a total mode of post-modern non-realism where Seinfeld like characters are stuck in a never-ending
state of extended adolescence where they act on whims and seldom suffer any real world consequences.

On the other hand, the example of Christ in his

dealing with the religious establishment seems to suggest
that we need to have a prophetic voice that disrupts the
status quo. As retired APU professor Dr. David Bicker
often puts it, the believers job is, "To afflict the
comfortable and comfort the afflicted." This seems to
suggest that we believers need to discern when to use
disruptive non-real televisual techniques to disrupt
comfortable patterns of reality that are at their core sinful
and contrary to the abundant life promised by Christ’s
good news.

We also need to know how and when to rebuild with constructive continuity styles that suggest
pathways into Kingdom living. Like Jesus upsetting the moneychanger’s tables at times we may need to
utilize the nonrealistic techniques of fragmentation and temporal disruption. Other times we may need to
utilize the objectivity of the seemingly omniscient camera to represent the realistic possibility of righteous
living.
 Production Methods to Match Realistic/Impressionistic Styles

While many things about elements of production are the same for both styles there are a number of
significant differences. I will introduce those differences here and unpack them in more details in different
sections of this text.

Realism is largely based on continuity and seamless flow that provide a psychological narrative the is
close to how our memory functions. Realistic programs match the action and hide the edits so that visually
there seems to be no break in reality. For this reason realistic directors shoot a wide establishing shot called
a master shot. Then the scene is repeated for different camera angles (coverage), hoping that every aspect
of these various shots will match what happened in that master shot (continuity). To try and ensure
everything matches realistic shoots employ a script supervisor and continuity director whose job it is to
make sure things are matched up. Camera angles and focal lengths are changed slightly between takes so
that any continuity errors are minimized by shifting the audience perspective. Scripts are analyzed, shot
lists are planned, and storyboards are drawn so that the various components will edit together seamlessly.
Lighting tends to be done in realistic colors and camera angles tend to stay at about the eye level of the
characters. Hollywood realism largely follows a standard set of conventions that we’ll cover in more detail
in the following chapters. This means that production practices are typically more standardized than in the
impressionistic production which is somewhat experimental by its nature.

Impressionistic production methods while often producing a chaotic look are not completely haphazard
during production. Camera angles, editing juxtapositions and offbeat lighting schemes are planned
specifically to jar audiences into making new comparisons and associations. Rather than a connecting flow
of cause-and-effect time, it is often the collision of images that creates meaning in impressionistic
narratives.

Strobed or stop motion animation is common and jump cuts are a rule of thumb. Fast motion and slow
motion sequences play with time, and special effects will manipulate gravity and defy other laws of the
natural universe. While realistic production’s aim is to give the editor tools to create seamless reality, the
impressionist director’s aim is to supply the editor with a variety of images that can be brought into a
collision and exploded in interesting ways. While many of these elements are planned and particular styles
of shooting are encouraged, the impressionistic production is more likely to shoot extra footage from a
variety of angles just in case. That way if the plan isn’t coming together in the editing process, the editor
has some other raw materials with which to play with in an attempt to save the impression.
If there is one primary message contained in this opening chapter introducing the
concepts of the visual narrative, it is this: There are multiple ways to tell a story
and the choices we storytellers make often reveal our underlying assumptions about
the world and about human nature.

Choose carefully.

Key Chapter Concepts:

Learning to analyze film at a component level will likely destroy the magic that initially prompted our
love of film.
The way in which narratives are structured often holds political/philosophical meaning. Realism
narratives have often supported the establishment (capitalism, patriarchy, etc.). Expressionistic narrative
styles employ techniques like fragmentation to give the impressions of feelings rather than the concrete
arguments given by chronological realism.
Even though the style is radically different extensive production planning plays a role in both styles.
The major difference is that in realism narratives the final look of the finished product is more predictable.
Although extensively planned the expressionistic final product is often more a product of experimentation
in editing and special effects.

eCollege Questions : 1- Visual Narrative

Q1: In what negative way might we be affected by learning to analyze a film at a component level?

Q2: What is the primary philosophical difference between realism narratives and expressionistic narratives?

Q3: What is the main difference in the production practices between realism and expressionistic narratives?

Q4 Application Section: Suppose your pastor came to you and wanted an expressionistic music video on
“God’s Multifaceted Love” What is an “expressionistic look” and how might you plan production?