Theories : Research and Planning

Recently in the other part of our course we have been learning about theorists believes about narrative. These theorists are Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi Strauss and Rolande Barthes.

Tzvetan Todorovs theory is that there are five stages to a narrative which is that:

• Everything starts at equilibrium.
• A disruption of this event by an event.
• A realisation that a disruption.
• An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption.
• A restoration of equilibrium - which may be a new equilibrium.

Vladimir Propps theory is that every film has 8 different character types which are:

• The hero, who is on the quest (search).
• 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 his 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.

Claude Levi Strauss' mainly focused on opposites (binary oppositions) - night/day, good/bad, light/dark. He noticed that these oppositions tended to structure texts such as stories, plays and films as well.

Rolande Barthes was interested in concepts such as negotiated meaning between institution and audience. The most well known of Barthes' codes is probably the enigma code. In its most basic form, it is the hook or mystery to be resolved for an audience.

These are the theories we have been taught and i am going to be evaluating a few more horror teaser trailers and find out how they use these theories, after i have done this i can relate this to our teaser trailer and try improving the trailer using these theories.