➞ A story is a series of events that tells us what happens. A story has themes and motifs, such as romance, family, money, or power. One story can have multiple narratives depending who tells it.
The story of Cumha is a young man lying awake, listening to the wind, missing his girlfriend.
➞ A narrative is how the story is told. Humans need a narrative to understand a story. It's created to appeal to an audience and puts themes into context, underlining what is important, and who the hero is.
The narrative of Cumha is a third person silent movie with an achronological timeline.
Third person: "a grammatical category of pronouns and verbs used when referring toobjects or individuals other than the speaker or his addressee(s)"
Achronological: A movie told through flashbacks and forwards that does not follow a linear structure.
Narrative Theory is about looking at the devices linking a series of events together and how an audience interprets the story because them. Cumha is a Narrative of Drama rather than a Drama of Events, which means it relies on emotion instead of action.
"...the most important is the plot, the ordering of the incidents... and happiness and unhappiness are bound up with action. ...it is their characters indeed, that make men what they are, but it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse." - Aristotle
➞ Propp's Fairy Tale Characters
This theory was devised by Vladimir Propp, who analysed over a hundred folk tales from different cultures and then proposed that there are only eight kinds of character;
The Hero - The character the story is about. We root for them to win, and they're often an underdog.
The Villain - Opposes the hero, strives to beat them. Often wishes harm on others.
The Donor/Enabler - Gives the hero something that will help them on their quest. A mentor.
The Helper - Often a sidekick, helps the hero complete their tasks.
The Princess - The sought-after person. Not always a woman.
The False Hero - A character who pretends to help the hero only to betray them.
The Dispatcher - Sends the hero out on their quest, gives them their role.
The Father - A figure of authority who rewards the hero for their brave deeds.
There are only two characters in Cumha, so we couldn't possibly have all of these characters, but the two characters we do have fit into some of these categories.
The young man is the hero, he's the story's protagonist, and plot is told through his eyes.
The young lady is the princess, she distant and desired, the whole story hinges on her absence.
➞ Levi Stratuss' theory of Binary Opposition
Without some form of conflict, there can be no story. Levi Strauss concluded that narrative conflict is caused by opposing forces, some of which seem obvious (good vs evil) or are more subtle and a little realistic (confidence vs insecurities). The narrative can only end when the conflict comes to some kind of conclusion.
The conflict of Cumha isn't conflict in the traditional sense ("a fight, battle, or struggle, especially a prolonged struggle; strife"), but it is a conflict in a more peaceful sense ("interference, as of one idea, desire, event, or activity with another")
I would say the main conflict in Cumha is past vs present or love vs loneliness. These more abstract concepts fit the notional nature of Cumha, as there is no physical malicious force.
➞ Narrative Location
Locations are tied closely with genre and Cumha is going to be shot in two very different locations; one) the bedroom the young man is in alone and two) the park he remembers.
There may be other brief moments in different locations, such as school, but they bare no great importance on the plot.
Cumha is a romance piece, it's a little sad, but it's still about love. The locations we chose are used often in romantic movies, they have connotations of affection and beauty.
They also parallel of each other - the bedroom is dark, enclosed, and isolated, whereas the park is bright, open, and full of nature and other people.
Our narrative locations tie into the wind being a symbolic code and expand on it being using nature as a whole as a tool to trigger memories from the young man. Nature is a heavy presence throughout Cumha, as the wind and then as the forest, and it's the force that ties the two locations together.
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