Narrative essay

After analysing the 5 theorists and their theories, I compared what they believed a horror movie/trailer should consist of in regards to its narrative side and concluded that the trailer didn't include all of their theories which consequently meant the trailer hadn't reached its full potential.

Todorov created a theory suggesting that all horror movies follow a certain plot line; equilibrium where all is "normal" in the story, disequilibrium where something unusual happens and we are introduced to the antagonist, recognition where the characters have now realised that there is an evil presence, action where they act against the force of evil and finally resolution where they have defeated the issue. A typical horror trailer should include all of these except the final point (resolution) as it gives away the ending of the movie therefore spoiling it and minimisiing those wanting to come and watch the movie. Our trailer doesn't follow this plot as it starts off with the disequilibrium before leading to the equilibrium (the short cuts of light happiness scenes) and completely leaves out the ideas of recognition and action. This is due to the fact that there was no clear story line and we focused on including your typical horror scenes i.e. staggering alone in a dark wood, getting attacked by something before laying dead on the floor.

Levi Strauss's theory suggests ideas of binary opposition of which I believe my group and I followed in the trailer through the use of lighting. The dark scenes clearly connoted evilness and the switch to the light scenes clearly connoted happiness, brightness and good which of course were our intentions as those scenes were part of her memories/past. This theory suggests that by using binary oppositions, it creates a form of understanding of what the good and bad is in the movie and which characters should be associated with which. As the victim was wearing normal clothing, not necessarily  to hide her body, the antagonist wore gloves hiding the only part of his body we would've been see, when grabbing her which represents a sense of mysteriousness and hidden identity further supporting the idea of binary oppositions.

Our summer trailer had partially followed Barthes's theory part of which suggesting that we should leave our audience guessing. For our summer trailer we hadn't given away a lot however I think we should've included a bit more of a clear storyline as it would've made it more interesting as it's more understandable and this would have further helped with Todorov's theory. In regards to the semantics of the trailer, there were no extra props or scenes which perhaps suggested additional meaning which again, if we followed Todorov's theory would have included this point. The idea of symbolism and binary opposition was shown through the use of lighting which shows how our trailer supported this theory.