View a film at any of a number of websites presenting short films (http://www.atomfilms.com/, http://ifilm.com) (You may wish to watch a few films to settle on the one you'd most like to discuss). After watching the film, consider its process of narration. How does the film distribute story information? What is the range and depth of narration across the film? How do these choices affect your understanding of the film and its events and characters?

Sharks and Structure at Exposure describes the general rules of the three-act structure for Hollywood script construction. According to this description, what are the necessary core narrative elements for a script, and at what points in the film should they come? What expectations will audiences have and how can scriptwriters either satisfy or subvert those expectations? What are the advantages/disadvantages of adhering to pre-fabricated forms? What are some examples of films that break and/or follow these rules?

French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is known for making unconventional films, particularly films which call attention to the artificiality of Hollywood narrative and stylistic conventions. Steven E. Alford addresses this in a lecture entitled "Jean-Luc Godard and Film as an Imitative Structure". Early in his lecture, Alford claims: "Godard uses film to criticize narrative." What does Alford mean by this statement? What criticisms of narrative does he ascribe to Godard? What are some of the violations of Hollywood narrative convention that Alford describes?

Plot-o-Matic: The Movie Plot Generator is a humorous site that asks you to plug in a few story details, and it then produces for you a ready-made Hollywood plot based on the details you specified. It is essentially a joke about how easy it is to make contemporary Hollywood narratives. Go to the site and generate a plot based on whatever details you'd like to input. Rather than just taking the result as a joke, however, consider your Hollywood plot in some depth. How does it potentially embody the basic traits of classical Hollywood narrative (causality, motivation, goal-oriented protagonists, etc.)? Does the supposed simplicity of contemporary big-budget Hollywood narrative films eliminate some of the core characteristics of classical Hollywood narrative, or are they still evident?

Research films such as Pulp Fiction , Out of Sight, and Back to the Futurethat experiment with the story order of their plots. Was the entire premise of the film based on the manipulation of time and order? How different would these films be were they to follow a traditional narrative format? Would these films be possible at all? Does knowledge of certain events before the film characters endow you with a sense of power over the film? How do you feel when events and information discussed by the characters, but withheld from you until later, are happening?