EVALUATION - Narrative theories

There are four main narrative theories we have looked at: Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss, Rolande Barthes, Todorov

Propp's sheres of action includes eight character types which he suggests most films, books, legends etc include:

the hero (who is on the quest)

the villain (who opposes the hero)

the donor (who helps the hero by giving them a magic tool)

the dispatcher (who starts the hero on his way)

the false hero (who tempts the hero away from is quest)

the helper (who helps the hero)

the princess (who is the reward for the hero)

her father (who rewards the hero for his efforts)

In our trailer we show the princess (Megan) and the hero/villain (Eric) but the audience will assume he is the villain. Because our product is a teaser trailer we could not give to much of the plot away and therefore did not want to show to many characters or to much of the story line.

Claude Levi-Strauss theory is about binary oppositions (opposites) for example day and night, light and dark etc. Our trailer does have a lot of opposites in it; the colour contrast is one of the main things, in the flashbacks when life is normal the contrast is a lot lighter than the rest of the scenes. Eric is always in dark colours where as in once scene Megan is in white and in the others she is in a bright colour.

Rolande Barthes theory was that the audience create new meanings when they see a text becuase of their previous experiences. Also one of Barthes main codes is the enigma code. In our trailer e have tried to create enigma as the audience doe not know why Eric has changed or if he is the one who gets the knife and is outside Megans house. The audience also doesn't know whether Megan manges to get out of the house or not. We have tried to create enigma as our project is a teaser trailer is it important that we keep the audience interested. The audience will also make up their own mind about Eric, people who have been in abussive relationships will assume her is a horrible person from past experiences.

Todorov suggested that there are five stages to a narrative:

-> equilibrium (normality)

-> a disruption of this equilbrium by an event

-> a realisation that a disruption has happened

->an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption

-> a restoration of equilibrium - which may be a new equilibrium

As we have been doing a teaser trailer we have not shown all of these stages as it would have given away the plot of our film. We do however so equilibrium (Megan and Eric together) and a realisation that a disruption has happened (Megan running away as she realise Eric is 'bad')

Rach.