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Narrative analysis is an in-depth study and examination of a plot or storyline of media product such as a film. Most media products have a story this applies to nearly every genre. Most medias have a storyline so that means that most have an outcome. This would mean that the there is a particular structure and tropes to appeal a specific target audience.

‘From the obviously narrative forms of horror films and television soap operas, to factual documentaries and unscripted reality television shows, and even the compressed storytelling found in 30-second advertisements or the interactive narrative form of videogames.’- Narrative, Jason Mittell.

Narrative analysis can be helpful when it comes to looking into fictional and non-fictional texts, as well as the narratives that we construct in media that seemingly have no inherent narrative at all for example social media.

Vladimir Propp is one of the main theorists for this method as he researched into the relationship between the narrative and characters. His research argues that stories within the media are more character driven and that plots from the media are developed from the different decisions, gestures and actions of characters along with how the characters within the story function.

Claude Levi-Strauss is another theorist that works with narrative. He was part of the structuralist and he was more interested in how we extract meaning from the narrative. He believed that these narratives have messages that can help us gain an understanding and learn about values, identity and social norms. He spoke about how oppositions in stories can relate to broader oppositions in culture.

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This type of analysis can be both a methodology and a method. Discourse analysis looks into how language is used within a media product and how meaning is created by it.

‘Discourse analysis has many different styles of analysis which all lay claim to the name. What these perspectives share is a rejection of the realist notion that language is simply a neutral means of reflecting or describing the world, and a belief in the central importance of language and representations in constructing social life.’ – Discourse, Rosalind Gill. This shows off that while there are different versions of this analysis there are common perspectives with the type of analysis.

Discourse Analysis can help us understand socio-cultural attitudes from a group or community. Discourse analysis can be can be done can be done on a range of different texts for example you could do a critical analysis on particular hashtags which would be a range of different types of people under particular tweets. This would be under a range of diverse people and once you pick a particular hashtag to analyse the main thing to do would be to find a common perspective or common wording that are repeated this would be shown one of the discourses involved within the text. The wording when it comes to discourse is important and can change the perspective depending on what topic the discourse analysis is on.

The main elements when it comes to discourse that would need to be looked at when doing the analysis is vocabulary, structure, genre, non-verbal communications and conversational codes.

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Visual Analysis is often shown as ‘film analysis’ but can be applied to still images, photography, advertisements, and any type of moving image, including television, music video, TikTok, YouTube video, etc.

This often involves a lot of similar to semiotics as it involves a lot of study into the signs. Visual analysis often involves mise-en-scene, camerawork, editing techniques as well as other cinematic conventions.

One of main differences is with visual analysis is that it focuses more on the visual elements of media products. This involves analysis of sequences, camera shots and angles as well as the editing techniques that goes into them.

‘Flashbacks, or temporal ellipses of many sorts, are often signaled with a dissolve (that edit which joins two shots, the first fading while the second gradually appears).’-Villarejo, Amy. Film Studies: the Basics, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. This quotation demonstrates one of the main editing techniques that could be analysed when looking at visual analysis.

One of the main parts of the visual analysis is camera shots:

Theses shots and angles are one of the main core parts of visual analysis as they can introduce characters and environments for the audience and by having the camera move or placed in a particular way can completely change how the audience would be able to see the scenes. An example of this is if the camera is placed in a cramped dark hall way with just one character in frame, who has a dark and mysterious costume on, this would create tension for the audience and typically this character would be shown most likely be an antagonist within the moving image.

This is an opening sequence that involves a range of shots to introduce characters and this is down mainly with a continuity shot. This would have a visual analysis that would involve talking about the range of shots that are in the sequence such as the dolly shot and the raze shots. With this opening there are a range of scenery that would indicate to the audience the type of genre and setting that they are going to see. For example the clothing and the environment would suggest to the audience that this series is set in the past. Along with that the range of different camera angles and shots allows the audience to see the environment and characters. Each of these camera shots and the mise-en-scenes within each shot was carefully planned out to keep the audiences attention and the transitions between each shot thats not continuous is smooth for example they have a lot of camera panning or movement that create transitions from scene to scene as well as fade to blacks and cuts.

The visual analysis of moving image allows an in-depth look into how the camera and scenes are set out and what each signifier could mean within each scene and what the creator of the media product was trying to accomplish and show the intended audience.