A Study Of Video Narrative In Rural Documentaries

The three rural issues have been a focus of national and social attention since the very beginning,and the level of development of agriculture has become an important measure of the country’s comprehensive national power.With the strategy of rural revitalization proposed in the report of the 19 th Party Congress and the achievement of the goal of comprehensive poverty eradication by 2020,documentaries on rural themes have recorded the pace of construction of China’s beautiful countryside with images,and have strongly promoted the dissemination of rural culture.From the theoretical perspective of video narratology,this paper analyses the narrative context,story text and narrative expression of rural documentaries,with a view to summarizing the narrative value of rural documentaries in the new era.Since the new era,rural documentaries have been influenced by both explicit and implicit social contexts.Under the national discourses of precise poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation,the new-age countryside has undergone radical changes in production,life,culture and other aspects,displaying a vibrant spirit.At the same time,the implicit social context is expressed through the narrative and creative subjects,providing support for the two mainstream discourses.Storytelling is one of the core elements of video narrative,mainly through narrative themes and narrative structure.A content analysis of the sample reveals that rural documentaries have gradually developed a unified narrative theme of ’development in stability and happiness in change’,influenced by the interaction of dynamic and static narrative themes.The narrative structure consists of two main types: dramatic paragraph structure and prose linear structure,which together with the narrative theme influence the formation of the story text.In addition,the form of narrative expression is also an important factor affecting the narrative of rural documentaries.In terms of narrative perspective,rural documentaries usually choose to use a combination of two narrative perspectives,namely unfocused and internally focused;in terms of narrative rhythm,external and internal rhythms are analysed;in terms of narrative symbols,the narrative expression of rural documentaries is mainly analysed in terms of visual and auditory symbols.Through a comprehensive analysis of the above perspectives,this paper summarises the multiple narrative values of rural documentaries: on the social level,rural documentaries have the characteristics of ethnographic films,and have obvious advantages in presenting a picture of the development and changes of the countryside.On the one hand,rural documentaries are a true reproduction of the rural landscape of China,presenting a familiar and new image of the new countryside;on the other hand,rural documentaries show the contradictions and problems that currently exist in the countryside,transforming cold and hard social issues into warm and trivial complaints through the mouths of the narrative subjects,revealing a strong sense of human feelings.On the cultural level,rural documentaries construct a positive image of the countryside through the narrative text on the one hand;on the other hand,they record the production and life style of the countryside in the new era,activating the nostalgic memories in people’s hearts.On the aesthetic level,rural documentaries use rich forms of narrative expression to bring out the traditional aesthetic values such as the unity of heaven and man and the sense of life contained in the narrative text,helping to spread Chinese rural culture and traditional aesthetic concepts.