MODULAR NARRATIVES

Modular narratives in contemporary cinema
by Allen Cameron

Modular narratives " articulate a sense of time as divisible and subject to manipulation".

Cameron identified modular narratives as four different types

• Anachronic 
• Forking paths 
• Episodic
• Split screen

Anachronic modular narrative -->  uses flashbacks and/or flashfowards, with no clear dominance between any of the narrative threads. These narratives also often repeat scenes directly or via a different perspective. examples include;

• Pulp
• Fiction and Memento

Forking Paths narrative -->  shows alternative versions of a story showing the possible outcomes that might result from small changes in a single event of group of events. 

Episodic narrative --> Are organised as an abstract series or narrative anthology. Abstract series type of narrative is characterized by the operation of a non narrative formal system which appears to dictate (or at least overlay) the organisation of narrative elements such as a sequence of numbers or the alaphet. Anthology consists of a series of shorter tales which are apparently disconnected but share a random similarity, such as all "episodes" being survivors of a shipwreck.

Split-screen narrative --> Different from other types of modular narrative previously, because their modularity is articulated along spatial rather than temporal lines. These films divide the screen into two or more frames, juxtaposing events within the same visual field, in a sustained fashion, examples include Timecode.

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