How does narrative apply to your work.
In the summer me and my group made a horror trailer, about a teenager and his friends who explore an abandoned building.
Narrative can be applied to my trailer using Todorov's structure of equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium/resolution. In my trailer however we do not have a resolution which connotes that we have done something successful as if you put a resolution in it ruins the trailer a film plot and there would be in point seeing it as a trailer is designed to create suspense. Todorov's theory wouldn't be completely relevant as we don't have a complete three act structure because of the no resolution.
Binary opposition creates a way of understanding for the audience it makes a complicated world simpler. This theory is by Levi-Strauss. A weakness to our trailer is that the teenager is running away from another teenager although you don't fully see the antagonist he is wearing similar Adidas trainers. In order to develop out trailer we could have the teenage male running from a older man or in contrast a young child female. We would do this as the trailer isn't effectively scary. Binary opposition is used in trailers as it can make the antagonist and protagonist conflict easily recognisable. Making the story line easy to follow.
My trailer is based around the protagonist teenager running away/being chased by the unidentified antagonist. Kate Domaille said that every story can be fitted into a narrative are one fits into 'the chase'. The fact that he's unknown connotes a sense of mystery and uncertainty the audience doesn't know why he can't be seen but there will be a story behind it.
Vladimir Propp argued that narrative have certain character types. A weakness could be that theirs no distinguishable character types for example the teenagers not a hero and theirs no other characters apart from the antagonist however Propp also said that the hero isn't always recognisable this leads the audience wanting to know how both characters fit into the narrative. Despite it making the audience want to know more about the trailer it means that it's not clear to the audience what's going on and can confuse them, suggesting that are trailer isn't very good for a horror trailer as it doesn't show enough of the narrative. Propp specifically made his character types so they are typical of a certain thing or person, my trailer fails to represent his narrative archetypes. If we were to re-do it we would make clear who the hero is we could do this by showing him with other characters so they have a reference, he could be shown to help save them.
