ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces some basic narrative principles from the field of narratology and uses them to explore narrativization in set design: how narrative elements such as themes, character and genre can be enhanced or legible in a film text's decor. It shows how to understand some narrative theories of film and it explains the work of the Affrons and outlines the advantages and limitations of their approach. The chapter explores their theory to maps out the problems and the modifications needed to use their terminologies when looking at more contemporary film texts, revisiting some key examples and applying a modified approach to the 2009 science fiction film Moon. When considering film set design, narrative is particularly important to the creation and understanding of the design of a film or television world, but narrative functions very differently in film and television, even if set design serves the distinct media in the same industrial/creative ways.