Tordorov’s narrative

Tordorov’s theory says that each story consists of five C’s. They are;

Calm- everything is normal and happy

Conflict- where the hero is challenged by an outside force

Complication-the hero’s attempts to get what they want are thwarted (often 3 times)

Crisis- beset with difficulties the Hero comes close to quitting (normally talked out it by helper or a God)

Climax-having decided against quitting Hero has one last try and achieves what they wanted.

These stages can also be called; state of equilibrium, disruption in equilibrium, recognition of disruption, attempt of restoring normality, restored equilibrium.  

These five stages are seen to be very familiar to many mainstream films. One of which could be the descent. In the beginning of the trailer you can see the equilibrium of the characters, as they enjoy themselves, smiling and laughing. The disruption then occurs when the other woman are told by our main character that there is no way out of the cave except downwards, the recognition of disruption then follows quickly as we see them struggle to find their route and begin to doubt their progress by getting suck and agitated.

Their attempt of restoring normality comes when they are trying to work together to get out of the cave, by reassuring one another that everything is ok and the things they are seeing is just in their heads. In this film equilibrium is never really restored however one of characters face a small equilibrium of their own as it is shown to be that she accepts her ‘fate’.

Propps character theory

One of the most well known theories is Vladimir Propp's character theory which looks at the different characters within a story based on their characteristics. The characters are broken down in to 8 parts:

The hero (main focus on their quest)

The villain (fights against hero)

The doner (gives advice or weapon to conqueror villain)

The helper (supports hero)

The princess (who the hero is fighting for, trying to protect)

The princesses father (sends the hero off on his quest)

The false hero (pretends to be hero so they can receive the reward)

Propps character theory used folk tales as the basis of his study and would explain the reason for the description of the characters.

Propp’s theory doesn’t exactly fit with the idea of a horror film genre as within a horror the main focus tends to always be the villain, despite them not being frequently seen. The other characters Propps talks about, such as, the doner, the helper, the princesses’ father, the princess, aren’t really seen within the horror genre and if they are, they often take a modern role as a ‘stock character’ (clever one, sporty one, popular girl) rather than following the main characteristic that Propp talks about.
Despite this, the characters do help to progress the narrative, making it known to the audience what to expect next, depending on the actions of each character

conclusions

From the survey that was conducted the ideal trailer will be:

·        something aimed at an older teenage audience

·        in a isolated location (eg. a country house)

·        something more psychological than blood thirsty

·        up keeping and idea of being trapped, not able to escape

·        a sudden shock, something that will have that boo factor

·        it will be diverse to home and cinema, able to create the same emotions and feeling despite where it being watched

·        finally, it will have a surprise, when it reaches its point of renewed equilibrium something will bring it back to tell the audience that it is false.  

This survey was created to give an analysis on what people most enjoy about watching films and to see what I can do to make my trailer something they may be interested in watching.

1. This sets the boundary for my audience, by asking ages it tells me straight away what kind of people I am trying to appeal to. As you can see a big percentage of the participants were between 16-18 whilst tells me that there is a big gap in the market for a horror that falls into this age bracket.

2. The gender of the participants was asked to give an idea what kind of people like what for example a males point of view of what they want to see will be different to a woman's so this will be a diverse overview.

3/4. These questions just tells us if there is still a great appreciation for film and in what genre in particular. This will give an idea of what appeals most to our audience and if we can include this in our trailer.

5. This was just to give an overview to see if horrors were still sort of in today's society and if so that about it attracts people to it when they do watch it 'sometimes'.

6. From the answers from this, we can average the most popular ideas and include it in our final project to produce something that will appeal to the masses.

7. A continuation from q.6, it just narrows down some of the most popular types of horrors that we had already found through research, so that we can focus on one idea.

8. once again this is narrowing down on the research we had already done. This just reiterates the type of film that appeals to people.

9. by asking the participants fear we can summarise the things that will appeal to them as being a horror, knowing that it will scare them we can then see the most said fears and work on including this.

10. The scariest part of a film is very important in any horror, if people aren't scared then it is not meeting the known convention of a horror, by knowing we can involve this at a peak time in our trailer

11.this is just to give an idea on how the consumer would like to watch their film, giving them variety and making sure their comfort has been considered.

12. the way something ends can make or break it so by asking this we wanted to pick up on what people would most like to see in a film they would watch.