How does Narrative apply to the trailer? christmas holiday re-write

In this essay I will be discussing how narrative applies to my trailer. I will be doing this by using existing examples from my trailer and the theories put forward by Todorov, Levi- Strauss and Propp. Todorov states that there are five stages in a narrative however as I am creating a trailer and not a film the only one that will be applicable is Disruption/ Disequilibrium. This is as equilibrium gives backstory and resolution shows the ending to the audience. We applied this in my trailer throughout however it is shown on screen most in the montage sequence. The monsters clawed hand is shown dragging over a tiled wall at the same time as another clip of the victim. the lowkey lighting and blood on the monster’s hand; as well as the bruising on the victim shows that this is the disruption as it has the conventions of a monster mauling a victim stock scene. My work conforms to the rules of Todorov’s theory as it would be the mid-section of the film and works as such. However, the jump scare at the end of the trailer does seem like resolution and therefore also breaks it by giving the audience a cathartic moment. I don’t think that this is ineffective as the sound edited scream would still cause a physical reaction. Levi-Strauss’ binary opposition is used in out trailer through our monster and victim. the victim is shown as weak and unable to fight back. An example is the colour of the clothing each are wearing as the monster is complete in black with blood soaked clothing. Whereas the main female victim is shown to have light clothing on with the semantics of her being covered in blood is that she has been tainted. Another way we did this is by using camera angles. We used some close up low angles of the monster to show him as domineering and we used high angle shots with a more open area to make the victim look smaller than she was. This is very relevant to our trailer in showing the good and evil within the characters. As without it the monster may have not been recognized as a real threat : he would have looked to be the average human height and the clothing would not fit the character correctly from further away. I have used the ideas of narrative to structure the trailer alongside using them to create stock characters. The rules of narrative can be effective when used correctly however theories such as Propps archetypes are not applicable to my trailer as the other theories are. This is as there are more likely to be applied to fairytales. However such as Levi-Strauss the use of the villain and the princess are shown. This is not effective to the trailer as the other fairytale characters are not present. This shows that not all narrative theory can be applied and the different genre fall into different rules.