Macro Elements

 Genre

The genre of a film means what category a film can be fit into when looking at its story. For example Westerns, Sci-fi, Comedy etc. Many films fit into more than one genre for example The Dark Knight Rises fits into the genres of Action, Thriller and Crime films.

You can often tell what genre a film is just by looking at a few pictures this is called the conventions
of a film. Some examples of conventions include:

By looking at these pictures people would associate it with a Horror movie because they typically include weapons like an Axe as shown in the first picture so that the antagonist seems more dangerous to the audience. They also include locations that are dark, old and cut off from the rest of world so that the victims have no escape like with the picture of the house. Lastly the third picture shows a monster which is also associated with many horror movies because it gives the audience the fear of the unknown.

Again by looking at these 3 images you can come to the conclusion that they belong to the Fantasy genre. The first picture shows a castle and castles are usually associated with fantasy films because they are inspired by the Medieval era when people believed in magic and witches. The second picture shows a wizard who is almost always in fantasy movies and usually the Wizard is the character who helps and advices the protagonist on their journey such as Gandalf and Dumbledore. The last picture shows someone doing a magic spell which is also a convention of Fantasy movies again because they are heavily inspired by the Medieval era.

                                                

Lastly by looking at these 3 images will tell the audience that the genre of this film is Sci-fi. In sci-fi movies the antagonist is usually aliens or robots because they represent the future and how humans need to work together to defeat them. Also fictional planets are typically associated with sci-fi movies with Aliens because many of them are about humans going to their home and taking them on.

Narrative

The narrative structure of a film is the way events are revealed to the audience unlike the plot which just refers to the story of the film not the structure. The narrative can be split into two categories linear and non-linear.

 A linear narrative is when the sequence of events are shown in the order that they place. They start with the beginning then go to the middle and then the end. This is the most popular form of narrative structure. Some examples include:

The opposite of a linear structure is non-linear. This is when the sequence of events are revealed out of the expected order. Some examples include: