Narratives ~ 500 Days of Summer

A personal favourite of mine, 500 Days of Summer uses a beautiful narrative for its story.

Main Narrative styles:

Voice over

Non Linear

Montage and music sequences


The Opening sequence and titles uses an voice over which reoccurs thought out the film. It's a classic way to introduce a story or characters, however in 500 Days of Summer it develops aspects of the film and characters where visual hints are subtle.

It also uses spilt screens of various images, this presents the two main characters at once and develops the atmosphere of the story and and how Tom and Summer develop and change in there relationship, like they have in there youth. This also reoccurs toward the end of the film, were Tom and Summer finally move on from one another.

Its a technique that i would love to use in my film, two framed images moving at the same time, presenting two sides to a story, without the need for words.
The linearity of the film is also interesting, it jumps back and forth between the time of the relationship, showing it in a way that allows us to see the characters from different perspectives which reveals and changes our judgements as an audience.

To show these jumps in time it uses title pages, this is an interest concept to consider in my own film, i would like to stray away from a linear timeline in my film. Perhaps for a 5 minute film this would be too ambitious, but depending on how its presented its something i will definitely look into in more detail.

I think overall what i love about 500 days of Summer is not only the brilliant script but how artistic and free it is, i can tell the director and creators made this film to what they wanted to do and let there artist ideas and humour run through it, with less concern of aesthetically pleasing the audience.