Narrative in the shadow of the image: Transformation of narrative structure in cinema with the effect of digitalization

People slide out of the meaningless functioning of daily life through narratives. The organization of experience of life and the construction of cultural accumulation become possible through narratives. Each of the oral, written and visual modes of communication has its own narrative. It is possible to come across traces of the narrative, from the drawings made by the first humans in the caves to the written works, in all areas of life. All narrative forms and techniques, including daily language, continue to develop in a transformation over time. From this point of view, this study focuses on the question of how cinema, which is one of the important technical developments and powerful narrative tools in history, has evolved in the historical process and to what extent its narrative structure has changed. In the first part of the study, the origins of the narrative and the maturation periods of cinema as a new narrative tool are dwelled on. In the second part, how the digitalization trend experienced in 1980 and the aftermath has caused a change in the production and consumption forms in the cinema industry, its sociological effects on human life and the direction in which the transformation has taken the narrative structure in cinema have been studied. In the third chapter, the narrative structures of the films Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan and 1917, which were chosen to represent different periods in the genre of war films, which include different genres and frequently benefit from the facilities of the technique, were analyzed and the prominent elements in the narratives of the films were discussed comparatively. In the analysis, the conceptual system that David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson treat the narrative as a formal system has been adopted and reconsidered in an original way.