Narrative essay

A documentary would usually include many interviews, eye witness reports and recreations of the event. We found this out through watching a number of documentaries with a similar story line of a character being kidnapped. Looking through and watching recreations of when Madeline McCann was taken gave us ideas on how to film scenes of when our character was taken and what sort of interviews to use when talking about the kidnapping.

Our film follows the theory of Todorov in the fact that the young boy Josiah who was taken as his equilibrium was disrupted when he was kidnapped from his home. The boy then goes back to his equilibrium through the many years of him living in the back of a shed, this is then disrupted again when he is found. We used a tracking shot of when the boy was found in the shed to show the audience his surroundings and what he had to live with for a number of years. This included a dirty mattress, no food or drink, no clean clothes and no heat. This shot was important when creating a documentary as the recreation showed the audience how he reacted when he was finally rescued. Sad and dramatic music played in this scene and through the majority of the film to show what a traumatic experience this would have been. This scene strongly followed Barthes code of 'Enigma' as it would of brought up many questions such as "how did he survive with no food or water?" "how long was he waiting to be rescued?". This was effective in making the audience question the Narrative and become interested in finding the answers.

To further enhance our narrative we used traits from Levi Strauss' theory of binary opposites. We did this through interviews with female family members and Josiah our character who was taken. This makes it more interesting for the audience through including both male and females in the story. Another example of binary opposites used in our film was the dramatic change in Josiah's lifestyle from when he was growing up with a loving family in a nice house to living in a dark shed with no company or food and water.

In a scene of our film another effective tracking shot was used when the boy is finally found by a neighbor and he runs away to try a get help as quickly as possible, this scene follows our genre well as it is a recreation of what happened to give the audience an idea of what the whole experience was like, this scene follows Barthes action code as it highlights a sense of panic and distress to call help and rescue the boy after many years of living on his own. Through following ideas of similar documentaries our film mainly consisted of straight cuts and jump cuts from scenes of the rescue being recreated jumping to interviews with family members, a scene in our film goes from the recreation of the boy being found which then jumps to an interview with his mother and what her thoughts were during her disappearance.

When given feedback on our narrative they found it intriguing and also found that it followed the documentary genre well through use of recreation and interviewing. Many questions that the audience put to my group were on the lines of "how/where was he captured" "was he abused while living in this shed by the kidnapper".