1. Chapter 3: Types of Movies
Narrative
A narrative tells a story. It can be a joke, a
commercial, a newspaper article or a
anecdote.
Narrative is a way of structuring fictional or
fictional stories presented in narrative
films, a concept we will talk more about in
Chapter 4.

2. Types of Movies:
• Narrative Movies – tell a straight-forward
story
• Documentary movies– records reality for the
edification of the audience with four different
approaches: factual, instructional, persuasive
and propaganda film.
• Experimental—non-commercial, art films that
venture outside popular film conventions

3. What’s a Convention?
• Film conventions include aspects of storytelling that
feature recurring themes, situations, settings, character
types and narrative formulas.
• Themes are unifying ideas that film expresses through
narrative or imagery
• Setting is where a movie’s action is located
• Presentation is often the peculiar cinematic language
of a certain genre that communicate tone and
atmosphere
• Character types populate certain kinds of films
• Story Formulas are the way certain kind of stories are
structured

4. Six Major American Genres

5. Gangster – deals primarily with the criminal
enterprise of certain disenfranchised ethnic
groups e.g. Italians, Irish, Jews, et al

6. Film Noir– mystery crime genre, filmed with a
lot of heavy contrasting shadows

7. Science Fiction– imagines life in the future or
in an alternate reality

8. Horror– themes include the living dead, psychotic
murders and urban legends of the criminally insane

9. The Western– tales of Americans and others
who conquered the early American West

10. The Musical —stories told with lost of singing
and dancing to push the story along

11. Our Viewing:
“Election”
Election is a film written and directed by Alexander Payne adapted
from a novel by Tom Perota. Alexander Payne is a prolific director
known for his quirky style and subject matter. He talks about that a
bit here in an interview you can see in the enhanced text version of
this lecture.
Author Tom Perrotta has seen many of his works adapted to film.
His reflections on post-modern America endear him to readers and
lend themselves to cinema which he talks about .
In Election, Payne uses close-ups, super-imposition and dramatic
staging to great affect, and music is critical to his mis en scene. The
film stars Matthew Broderick as teacher Mr. McAlister and Reese
Witherspoon as student Tracy Flick in an allegory about politics,
class, ambition, karma and Chinese food.