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What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Telling a Story Using Moving Images

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of telling stories using moving images?

The overall objective and purpose of telling a story is to engage with the audience to convey the meaning of a plot and create a human connection on an emotional level (Batty p292). Stories can be told in a variety of ways, and the method by which a story/narrative is told determines the way in which we connect and interact with it emotionally. Each mode of story telling is capable of presenting the same story in different ways. Humans are capable of both understanding and interpreting the different content and style associated with different modes of story telling.

For the purpose of this essay I contend that a moving image is one that is viewed upon a …show more content…

Without the presence of any dialogue a feeling can be created by the way the camera moves and reveals what is on screen. Whether this be a pan across the screen, a slow or fast zoom in or out, a certain perspective shot or a point of view. The way the camera moves, allows the audience to feel a sense of involvement as if they are part of the action because of the “accompanying movement of the eye” following what is happening on screen (Ganz p228).
As Bubb states ‘technology now offers speed and fluidity’ (p370). In story telling this relates to the pace at which the information is understood and also the structure in which the information is presented. When using moving images to tell a story the control over space and time that the storyteller has is very different to that when telling a story using the written or spoken word. The film ‘Pulp Fiction’ by Quentin Tarantino demonstrates the notion of being able to control and manipulate the relation between space and time very well. It is a film with a complex narrative that has a non linear structure, where a combination of interlinked stories are told out of order, yet the flow of the narrative still runs smoothly and keeps the audience in suspense. The irregular pattern in the film where it fluctuates and jumps from scene to scene shows a combination of images that are “discontinuous moments, rendered continuous” (Ganz 2010 p 229). We have the knowledge that these moments “clearly can not

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