Narratology of Sequence Shot in the Digital Era with Emphasis on the Concepts of Time Order and DurationCase Study: Russian Ark

A style of filmmaking, named Sequence shot or Plan-Séquence, has been one of the prevalent styles of filmmaking in the last few years. The term “Sequence shot”, or “Plan-Séquence” in French, is a long take that constitutes an entire scene. The camera movement in this kind of shot covers the whole space of the scene. Various filmmakers from all over the world, including the Iranian Shahram Mokri, Mania Akbari, and Mehdi Fard Ghaderi, have shown interest in the sequence shot style, employed it extensively, and exerted it in their works. “Fish and Cat” (2013), the most famous movie employing such a style) has gained international fame . Although it may seem a modern movement, the sequence shot cinema has its roots in classic cinema, in which the films were shot in a single take owing to the – absence of film editing. However, by using the achievements of digital era, such as the replacing of negative films by hard disks, the duration of cinematography was increased to fit the capacity of hard disks. In contrast with the past, when shooting was limited to only 11 minutes of continuous film recording, the new technologies have brought up the possibility of producing long shots without the use of cinema tricks (Rope, 1948). The modern sequence shot cinema has been able not only to present critical qualitative and quantitative revolutions, but also to change narratology in modern cinema. As a result, the changes brought about by sequence shot influenced narratology in cinema. In this article, “Duration” and “Time Order”, the two concepts of the narrating process are investigated, and then the movie “Russian Ark”, as a prominent sequence shot movie, is analyzed for the further investigations of the new changes brought about by the modern sequence shot cinema. “Russian Ark”, one of the pioneers of the one take films, is an experimental historical drama directed by Alexander Sokurov, entirely filmed in the Hermitage Museum in 96 minutes. It was nominated for Palme d’Or in 2002. The results of this article clarify the differences between in classic cinema and that in the modern sequence shot cinema. In classic cinema, narrating was based on a sequential time order, but in the modern sequence shot cinema, what Gerard Genette called “Anachrony” is used to build a time order in the story. The arrangements of the events in the narrative is called Time Order. Any change in the succession of events will result in Anachrony, which can be divided into two types, Analepsis and Prolepsis. As a result of using “Anachrony”, the duration in films is capable of experiencing different states of decrease, increase, and compression. The term “Duration” indicates the relation between the time needed for particular events to happen and the time taken for them to happen in the text. It is essential to recall the earlier works which were filmed as “Scene”, in which the narrative time is always equivalent to the dramatic time and the event time. In such works, the time order is not disturbed.