The “Stories We Tell”-By Sarah Polley.

The “Stories We Tell”-By Sarah Polley.

Abstract

Titles in any artwork, particularly, movies, films, and books are essential; however, the truth remains that, there is no specific formula for developing a magic title. This is because the relevance of the title to the documentary or any piece of artwork entirely depends on the filmmakers, publishers and marketers who struggle to link the film to its intended users and provide an adequately thought tittle. A good title makes the artwork appeal to its audiences. It motivates a person to take a closer look at the content. Many a time, audiences get seduced initially by the only an artworks title. Primarily, titles have a vital role in marketing reception and even understanding of the film. Unlike Sarah Pulley’s title to the documentary, sometimes titles may not deserve the movie it describes. It may fall off, wholly ineffective and confusing to an audience.

“Stories We Tell” comes out as a title for the documentary directed by Sarah Polley. However, for this film, there are strong instances and revelations of experiences that illustrate the significance of the title to the literature. Aspects concerning systems of Paratexts, designing of film titles, picture title sequences, and cinematography explores the understanding of a particular title that reflects an artwork. With respect to “Stories We Tell” one can easily conclude that the title poses to be catchy and relates to the documentary. This is because the documentary reveals a series of storytelling about the life of a family member.

Introduction.

Most families have their narratives that are passed from generation to generations. In this cycle, the past experiences continue to live.  Due to a continuous unfolding and revelation of unknown events, stories tend to change as they pass over.  In most set-ups like families, each character or member of the family has something to say with others holding secrets that have kept to the grave. Psychological studies reveal that the manner in which a person narrates a story assists one to understand what the narrator was feeling, is feeling, or has been feeling throughout the unfolding of events captured in the story at hand. A plot-twisting narrative can effectively be developed after hearing the story from different viewpoints.

Therefore, it would be right to say that stories assist members of a family or associated group in continuing with their life without being clueless. A story is able to shape experience through memory and truths. “Stories We Tell” a documentary by Sarah Polley surrounds the discovery of truth that links Diane Polley mother to Sarah Polley. The documentary highlights several interviews and narrations from different members of the family to unveil secrets and truths. This revelation of truths and secrets are outpoured by Michael Polley, Diana’s husband, Harry, Sarah’s biological father, and Sarah’s sibling and other family members (Polley et al., 2013).  This paper discusses the significance of the title to Sarah Polley’s documentary, “The Stories We Tell.” It further relates the title to the plot and form of the documentary film itself.

The Significance of the Title in Relation to the Plot and Form of the Documentary.

The film, ‘Story We Tell’ purposes its significance of the title to communicate the theme and the tone of the movie to its audience before they begin to watch. It actually serves as a compelling title for what it contains is a narration of the family story. The title of the movie is essential for marketing reception, and fostering understanding of the film (Sarah et al., 2013). In telling the story about family, the title of the documentary makes sense. An effective and straightforward documentary describes its title direct to tell about what its message is all about. The title in itself does not exclusively tells about the documentary, but provides a hint on what is going to be watched.  For this case, ‘Story We Tell’ gives its audience an expectation of real-life challenges or circumstances that are mostly sought to ever narrate and live with.

A compelling documentary or film title is able to convey a tone or a theme before the audience starts to watch it (Rea and David, 2015). Regarding “Stories We Tell,” a person may quickly be in a position to realize that the content of the film regards different stories over certain events, experiences, or life secrets surrounding people of a particular set-up, just before the movie is watched. On the contrary, an ineffective title may mislead an audience on what the content entails before watching the video. But, a terrible title can deter a viewer and to a far extent destroy the film’s marketing campaign, even for an intelligently crafted movie.

This documentary’s title significance thrives from the fact that the whole film surrounds how the family opens its diary with the mother as the subject. From the introductory part, the movie begins straightforwardly with the introduction of those designated as storytellers.  These storytellers include Sarah Pulley’s father, Michael, her brothers Mark and John, Her sisters Joanna and Susy as well as Harry, the biological father (Polley et al., 2013). Additionally, the film reveals several other relatives and friends to Sarah’s mother as part of the interviewees. The film talks about Diane from the beginning. A series of stories are dug from the homey intimacy of their living room chairs, couches and tables. As told from other interviewees, experiences relating to shared past that develop more surprising, complex, and touching are dug into. Recollections and Supplements from Ms. Polley from movies, visual materials and old photographs are explored in developing the memory of experiences.

As suggested by the title, there are many stories to tell from Sarah’s interviewees; this could be partly due to having nothing neat about her mother, Diane Polley with regard to the secrets she kept and the life she lived. From the fact that her youngest was not interested in creating a traditional portrait for mum, may suggests too, that Diane Polley wasn’t traditional. Typically, through storytelling, one is able to learn more about the revelations of the secrets and experiences that are revealed, particularly when it rims views from a group of people. For this documentary case, the stories told provides much to be learnt about what people think about Diane. From the responses, she is characterized as family-oriented, as an enigma, an extrovert, and independent.  Sometimes few facts are revealed from an individual during storytelling, as for Diana, facts relating to the place of birth, school attended, or when married are relatively not provided with exemplariness. The film reveals that out of the many stories told about Diane, some remain undiscussed, specifically about her real talents, and how she acted on and off. Perhaps, this could be because people would fear, or tend not to explore much on the negativity of someone.

At the most fundamental level of a title, is at the point it is able to give an instantaneous critical context, a level that allows an audience an entryway into the subject material of the movie (Rabiger, Michael, and Mick, 2013). This should be at the point that the viewer knows that certain interpretations are much more probable than not. The underlying principle in artwork titles is to relate the title thematically and symbolically to the content of the movie or that particular artwork. “Stories We Tell,” portrays a number of virtues including its formal design. As implied by the title, the movie is revelatory rather than exploitative. The movies relevance and significance to its title is indicated it’s full of autobiographical and biographical tales. It resists flattering a self-portrait of a young girl in search of her biological father. It goes through its theme building on interests and experiences in narrative forms. Sarah Polley explores the storytelling theme in consideration of the space between a lived life and its conflicting as well as its different representations.

The significance of the “Story We Tell” in relation to its plot, doesn’t reflect an exercise of relativism. The stories are narrated withy everyone having his or her memories of Sarah’s mother, Diane Polley. However, these stories conform to the collectively accepted facts of her life. The form of the movies focusses much on how each person organizes his/her memories to co-join with humor, love, self-interest, regret, or a wincing mix of lacerating humor and emotional detachment. The plot of the fil reveals that not of all the stories told in the movie pose to be easy. To some extent, the film explores the family histories to indulge in self-mythology or settle scores.

In Cinematography (Birke, Dorothee, and Birte, 65-87), a Paratext (film title), needs to be reduced into the simplest possible expression that is rather specific given the fact that Para texts for this case, the film titles, use different media such as TV media and film media. According to Birke and Colleagues, the film title maker has to go through the Paratexts to enter title properly. This proves to be a systematically and theoretically right way strategy for producers, distributors, and receptionists who try to get viewers the film audience through. Primarily, the function of a film title is to guide its audiences through the documentary flow, television channel flow, or film pages (Heiderich, 2018). The title guides the reception and interpretation of the film, usually by stressing a particular point of view, or by providing viewers with an abstract or a resume of the film. This is precisely what Sarah Polley provides in her documentary title, “The Stories We Tell.”

Unlike book titles, newspaper headings and paratexts, titles of short stories, and novels, film titles have been distinguished by the total impossibility of anaphoric relations that exist between the title and the film text (Rabiger, Michael, and Mick, 2013). This approach has indeed been contemporary disregarded as titles are not too far removed from the movies and films’ content. This is the case of “The Stories We Tell,” the content comes out in narration of events, experiences, and stories relating to a family member, thus, title-content conformity.  The manner in which Sarah Polley’s documentary title is displayed in the movie reflects an art form. The titles credits are introduced on the screens while its title sequence is kinetically visually animated. The design of the film in question reveals a revelatory design rather than exploitative one.

Conclusion.

Movies and documentary titles can pose to be of great fun. It is through them that the audience or the viewers point out the bond that links the filmmaking art and the graphic design as well as the visual cultures as a whole. This bond has not missed for the case of Sarah Polley’s documentary “The Stories We Tell.” The title of this documentary has significantly served a noble purpose to the content and film theme that to itself in moving the overarching family story ahead. The film titles serve to inspire graphic designers, connoisseurs or digital artists, producers, distributors, marketers, and movie receptionists establish a creative need of the film to the audiences and have it a blockbuster.

This paper has successfully proved the significance of the documentary directed by Sarah Polley in relation to the film’s plot and form. The article excellently presumes that the content of the film is significantly related to the title. The movie poses as a narrative from different family members’ perspective, so does the title infer. The documentary features a series of storytelling from a cast of characters of varying reliability and thus, stands to be significant since the documentary explores an elusive nature of memory and truth, with the core profoundly shaping the narrative in defining the individuals in the family interconnecting to create a funny, profound, and poignant picture. It, therefore, rests on being true, that the success of the film in capturing the attention of its viewers and audiences, in general, has majorly been influenced by the relevance of the title on top of its artistic nature.

Work Cited:

Polley, Sarah, et al. “Stories we tell.” (2013). https://olin.tind.io/record/368528

Tell, Stories We. “Sarah Polley.” National Film Board of Canada (2012).

Rabiger, Michael, and Mick Hurbis-Cherrier. Directing: Film techniques and aesthetics. Taylor & Francis, 2013.

Rea, Peter W., and David K. Irving. Producing and directing the short film and video. CRC Press, 2015.

Heiderich, Timothy. “Cinematography techniques: The different types of shots in the film.” Ontario Mining Association. Recuperado de https://www. Oma. on. ca/en/content pages/resources/free-report-cinematography. pdf, (2018).

Birke, Dorothee, and Birte Christ. “Paratext and digitized narrative: Mapping the field.” Narrative 21.1 (2013): 65-87.