I have always enjoyed watching horror films and have seen many. I feel that I have gained enough knowledge from watching these, to create a succesful trailer that will represent the horror genre well.
The skills I gained in my AS coursework will be of an advantage to me at A2. Last year our task was to create a magazine cover, which is one of the three things we have to create for our option. My magazine cover last year was a success and I believe creating one for a horror film will be just as successful. This is another reason as to why we have chosen this option.
'Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness. Many horror movies also include a central villain." Wikipedia
I thought this quote from wikipedia describes horror films down to the tee and thought this is an outline of what a trailer consists of.
Theory -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In order to complete research effieciently i have started to look at media theories and will include this in my analysis.
"Theory is really nothing more than a way of thinking, that is more systematic and sophisticated than thinking in an everyday sense"
The areas of theory
Behaviourism- uses and gratifications of theory
Structuralism- semioties, signifiers and codes
Narrative and Genre- branches of structuralism
Feminism- gender bias and control
Post-Colonialism- the politics of race and the world order after western military or commercial empires have broken down
Consumerism-what influences people to buy media
Jacques Derrida
proposed that 'a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres , there is no genre-less text'
Levi Strauss
developed the concept of bricolage. Saw any texts as constructed out of socially recognisable 'debris' from other text. He saw the writers construct texts from other texts as a process of: Addition-The use of a rude word, something not typical of a genre.
Deletion- where you might take something typical out
Substitution- something in which is essential the same but something different
Transposition- taking the familiar concept and putting it in a different place,concept
Bricolage assumes that most of the film fits the structures of the genre. But the unique selling point is a slight difference either added, deleted, substituted or transposed.
Vladimir Propp
'The folk wondertale' using the genre form he studied hundreds of fairy tails.
He identified that there is in every fairytale:
8 character roles(or spheres of actions)
31 functions - which move the story along
Propps' 8 characters roles include:
The hero - Character motivated by an initial lack
The Donor- provides the object with some form of magic property
The villian- character portrayed as evil, usually is scheming
The helper- aids the hero
The princess- object of the villians' schemes and reward for hero
Her father- validates the hero
The dispatcher- sends the hero on his way
The false hero- character thought to be the hero
Propp's theory is a form of structurilism.
Structurilism is seen as that all media is inevitably in the form of certain fixed structures, that are often culturally derived and form expectations in the mind of an audience from within that same culture. An example of this would be the Prince and Princess always marrying, living 'happily ever after'.
Todorov
Developed the theory of disrupted equilibrium.
He identified that stories follow a typical pattern of:
Equilibrium -----> Disequilibrium-----> Equilibrium
This theory fits equally well with film texts. It again follows the same pattern.
Normal world- Things are as they should be in the story
->
Disrupted- a key event causes the disruption
->
Normal is restored- resorted at the end of story usually by actions of the hero
After more research and studies Todorov developed his theory even more into a 5 stage pattern.
1. a state of Equilibrium
2. a disruption of the equilibrium by an action
3. a recognition that there has been a disruption
4. an attempt to repair the disruption
5. a rein statement of the equilibrium
Roland Barthes
believes with in a text there are 5 action codes that enable an audience to make sense of a narrative
-Hermeneutic ( Narrative turning points )- we know where the troy will go next
-Proairetic (Basic narrative actions )-detectives interviews suspect or femme fatale seduces hero -Cultural ( Prior social knowledge )- our attitudes to gender or racial stereotypes
-Semic ( medium related codes )- intertextuality- what we have seen before
-Symbolic ( themes )- iconography or a theme such as image vs reality
Diegisis
This theory applies to narrative events, just as it did to sounds.
Diagetic- narrative events that take place before the audience, within the field of vision
Non-diagetic- takes place off screen either before the movie has started, between scenes or simultaneously but in another location.
Victor Shklovsky
Attempted to distinguish between the plot which he defined as the events we actually 'see' in the narrative; and the story which contains all the information or events affecting the characters both on and off screen.
He gave them difficult names:
Fabula- the story i.e the whole world of the story before during and after what we see or hear
Syuzhet- only the event we see or hear in the field of vision
Chiaroscuro
A word meaning 'light and shade' or dark refering to the modelling of volume by depicting light and shade by contrasting them boldly.
All of these theories have helped me gain a wider range of knowledge of media theory and I plan to include these in my research and planning.
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