Narrative Lab Teams (NLT)
PROJECTS
Project 1 / Team 1
From 2012 to 2015 we analyzed all the original Pixar movies: Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up, Brave, Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur. We had a look at the main characters' cultural-semantic ascription with the help of a cultural-semantic tool of analysis and described the various plot-structures that emerge from such an ascription. In the process we thought about how the traditional humanities can learn from the digital humanities and still maintain their distinctive way of doing things. The project culminated with the publication of an article in the journal Semiotica (2017, Vol. 218, September: 91-118. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2016-0081)
Project 2 / Team 2
There is no correspondence between the vast amount of sequels and the little academic work there is on sequels, so in 2016 we decided to analyze all the Pixar sequels (Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Toy Story 4, Monsters' University, Finding Dory, Cars 2, Cars 3, Incredibles 2), comparing them to the source movies, and also to the sequels within the same series (where possible). We ranked them by following the review website aggregates Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and Metacritic and analyzed the sequels' traits to find equivalences with audience preference and, why not, evidence of quality. In the process, we have also tried to define the caracteristics traits of sequels by adapting a tool devised for TV series to the requirements of sequels. The results of our analysis have been published in the journal Quarterly Review of Film and Video (2021, Vol. 38 [3]: 369-392. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2021.1890974).
Project 3 / Team 3
We started in 2017, and this time we focused our attention on the phenomenon of TV series. Usually, TV series are defined according to formal criteria, which we suspect are themselves dependent on the culture of origin of the series. Since recently media-services providers like Netflix and HBO have started to create 'local' products, our research has suddenly become particularly interesting. Through a mixed-method analysis, we have compared the first season of the Anglo-American TV series The Crown (Netflix) with the Spanish Isabel (RTVE). Both are historical series, both deal with the reign of a famous 'Elizabeth' (Isabel la Católica [1451-1504], Elizabeth II [1926-]), and both do it in completely different ways. We have looked at the cultures of origin of the two series and argued for specific cultural features which render the narrative style of the two series so different. The result of our research - "Quality TV and cultural origin: a mixed method analysis of the historical series The Crown (Netflix) and Isabel (RTVE)" - has been published in English Text Construction (2021, 14 [2]).
P.S. We are very grateful to RTVE and Diagonal TV for allowing us to use the scripts of Isabel.
Project 4 / Team 4
We're waiting for an interesting proposal. If you have one, please contact us at daniel.candel@uah.es.