Closed Ending

Closed endings, by contrast, do just what the phrase suggests, namely bring closure to a story. They present a definite end to the story being told. 



The Revenant has a closed ending scene which allows the audience to notice that it is a closed ending and it closes the storyline of the film. After the final fight Leonardo Dicaprio has with Tom Hardy, you can see a ghostly figure of a woman who is Dicaprio's wife within the film which indicates he is dying. On top of that you can hear heavy breathing when the screen goes black and tells the audience he is about to draw his last breathe. 

Open Endings

·        An open ending is one that leaves the major conflict initiated by the suspense plot unresolved. An open ending leaves an audience with a definite sense that the story is unfinished or may continue after the section of the narrative we have seen. 

Inception is a perfect example of an open ending. The narrative for Inception is about dreams and how they try and extract a piece of intel from someone, but the deeper into the dream they go the harder to tell whether it is reality or not. Christopher Nolan uses the use of this concept to end Inception as Leonardo Dicaprio's character gets his kids back but as his symbol of the spinning top tells him whether he is in a dream or not. The spinning top doesn't stop spinning from what we can see before it is cut to a black screen which can leave the audience in an opening ending and makes them think whether he is in a dream or it is reality.

Anti-Realist

·        An anti-realist narrative has the freedom to indulge in the presentation of events that could never happen in ordinary life. Superhero films have their own realism – and internal logic that establishes the “special powers” possessed by the characters which govern what protagonists and antagonists can and can’t do. 

     Even given this realism, they are not what we would describe as “realist”. In everyday life men cannot stretch their arms around buildings. 

Realist

·      Realist narratives aim at representing life as we know it. Phrasal terms such as “social realism” extend this idea and focus on issues that confront us in the everyday actualities of our own lives.

The vast majority of films made for mainstream audiences aim to be realistic, that is to say, they aim to preserve and internal logic established early on in the film regarding. In order for realism to be maintained, the rules established at the beginning of film governing the way the film world works cannot be broken later on.

A realist narrative draws its power from the portrayal of real events. Realist narratives focus on the life that we know and are bound by the same rules that our own lives are bound by.  We do not expect a male character in a realist narrative to suddenly zoom up into the sky. Realist narratives often focus on the kinds of issues and challenges that face ordinary people in their everyday lives. 

Linear Narrative

A narrative  is a story that includes plot, characters, setting, climax and resolution. Linear narratives present stories in a logical manner by telling what happens from one point in time to the next without using flashbacks or flash-forwards and then returning to the present. 

Beginning, Middle and End

Linear narratives live up to their name, meaning you could draw a straight line from the beginning to the end of a story. These narratives start the story at the beginning and tell consecutive events until the finale. 

An example of a linear narrative is Soap Opera's. Soap Operas rarely jumps around with time and they aim at actuality, representing real life as it is lived and experienced. 

Flashback

A flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory.

Flashbacks are a key signature of the hit US TV show Lost. In every episode there is a fragment where a character remembers something from their past and it shows the audience how they got to the island. Flashbacks are useful because they allow the audience to see into a characters past and allows any loose ends to be tied up within the narrative.

Non-Linear Narrative

 Non-Linear narratives are story-lines that don't always stay in a straight line they jump around with time and use a wide range of flashbacks. Directors such as Christopher Nolan like to play around with the narratives and whose films are normally in a non-linear form. A film such as The Prestige jumps between the present and past to unravel the story for the viewers and keeps them engaged to what has happened and why it has happened. 



This extract is from the beginning and the ending of The Prestige and Nolan uses his non-linear storytelling to jump between the present and the past to unravel the story Nolan has wrote and directed for his audience. 

Narrative Structures

Story – The whole diegisis

Plot – Is the arrangement of story units

Narrative – The narrative includes everything including the film devices. The overall arrangement of parts that a media text comprises.

In film, the narrative includes:

• ·      The story content
• ·      The plot, the particular ordering of the story units
• ·      All the technical and stylistic elements that are used to deliver the story content.