OP/DEVELOPMENT/Narrative Structure

I’ve talked with interest previously about the structure of the stories in a few films and it’s a major part of this project. I have, after much thought, decided to arrange the telling of my narrative in a non-liner structure. I hadn’t originally considered this as an option but one of the key aspects of this story was to show the passage of time. I had for a while considered focusing on a shorter passage of time, covering just from the point the scientist starts the interactive video logs. I re-accesed this decision after a constructive group critique and the undertaking of research into films that skew their narrative time line. Conveying a large amount of time within the confines of a short film is a difficult and perhaps ineffective process. No matter which way I thought about it, playing this length of time out in a linear fashion would not come across correctly. I felt that by  splitting the scenes into two groups, before and after a key event, then mixing the running order I could convey  clearly the passing of time without the way I was representing it becoming  the main issue of this. So for instance in one scene the scientist will appear tidy, clean, calm and content whilst in the next he could appear unclean, scruffy, depressed and older. We know as viewers it’s jumped forward and we accept that because there is no “half-done” passage of time shoe horned in that could be as unconvincing to the viewer as it is narratively essential.

I looked in depth at structure of other films in an essay I did for my research and discovered that a number of these had diagrams that depicted their plots and narrative. In order to get a detailed grasp of how events actually unfold admirers or fans had created these. Two of which you can see below, one for primer (the_time_travel_method.jpg) and one for memento(Dr Steve Aprahamian).

With this in mind I decided to create my own map of the Outpost plot. I found it not only useful to myself to help plotting and arranging the mixed up scenes but a help when explaining the project to others. This will particularly be the case when going over the project with my potential actor and colleagues. The initial scribbled pencil drawings were not particularly clear so kind of defied the point! I decided to create a much more effective pdf which you can download below.

OP diagram