5 narratives

introduction: Narrative can be defined as a chain of events in a cause and affect relationship occurring in time, and is a sequence of events in a chronological order to make a meaningful story. the trailer I will be using is Last Man Standing from our production called enemy of my enemy. Narrative is important to my trailer because like Vlad Propp says there are limited character types that share the same function. Furthermore Strauss is a valid narrative theory as it says that narratives are structured by pairs of binary opposites and this is evident in my trailer because we have good v evil and teen punishment.

todorovs theory shows an equilibrium (happy, normal, utopian place to be) then a problem that arises to destroy the happiness which is called distruption and finally there is the resolution which is when the characters get rid of the aggressor or ghost and everything goes back to normal. The problem with having the resolution in the trailer is that it ruins the whole point of watching the film because it has shown what the result is and it therefore would not apply to a trailer. this applies to last man standing slightly but not completely as there isn't a significant utopian place however there is a tag-line which is 'some secrets are better untold' which implies that everything was ok until secrets were let out. the disruption on the other hand is very clear and goes on for most of the trailer and we see that there is an unidentified aggressor that is most likely killing people or maybe possessing them as there is a religious symbolism. I would say that this trailer was competently linear and followed the rules as it had a clear beginning middle and end but it could have had a clearer beginning. These rules are key to follow in order to make the story believable and look correct as taking the story out of chronological order could confuse the viewer and deter them from watching the film.

Binary oppositions can be defined as a binary opposition is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. This is shown in horror through opposites such as good v evil, male v female, youth v adult and so on. This applies to my trailer as the characters are the good guys and the aggressor is the killer/bad guy. This is important to have in a trailer as it could be a good basis for the whole film and could indicate what type of horror you are going for, without a clear binary opposite like good v evil the trailer/film would just be people chasing other people. We would know who sin my trailer through effective use of costume and make-up which is mine-en-scene and this could make the characters clear by for example giving the evil black/dark clothing and scars, gashes or grazes and for the good we could give brighter clothing but still give wounds to show thatchy are the victim. We could also do this through camera angles by filming the antagonist at low angles to connote that he is intimidating and dominant over the protagonists and for the good guys we could film them at a high angle to imply that they are inferior and weak in comparison to the antagonist. Lastly this can be done through editing by creating a jump scare at the end with the antagonist to show that he is bad. 

the enigma code by Barthes can be defines as any particular part of the story is unclear and is purposely done so that mystery is created, this is done to keep the viewer guessing and wondering what will happen until all is revealed in the final scenes. This does apply to my trailer but is not very clear, I would say that the aggressor was a mystery because even though it might or might not have been Levi the aggressor had he's coat which could have been used to make us think it was Levi. This is good to have in a story as it makes the viewer want to stay for the whole thing as they want to know how things pan out. If your story doesn't have this then it could be a problem because most enigma's occur during the disruption as everyone would wonder who the killer is? why he is haunting them?

Propps theory can be defined as Vladimir finding similarities in stories, mostly in the characters, for example the ones he found were: the hero-character who seeks something, the villain-person who actively blocks hers quest, the donor-person who might provide an object with magical abilities, the dispatcher-person who sends the hero on his mission, the false hero-person who disrupts the hero quest by making false claims, the helper-person who aids the helper, the princess-person who acts as the reward for the hero, and lastly her father who acts to reward the hero for saving the girl. This theory is still relevant to a certain extent for example in my trailer we had a hero and a villain, the student Daniel being the hero and the unidentified person being the villain but we didn't really include that many other characters into our trailer.

to conclude i think that i followed some of the narratives and there rules and i feel that quite a few of these applied to my trailer. this is important to construct your trailer like this to make it look professional and so that it follows typical conventions of the horror genre and sub-genre that you are focused on, it is also important to edit to show a small amount of what the film would be so tat the viewer gets a grasp of what you would be watching.