Theories

We looked at different theories when creating our teaser trailer as it was important to conform to some and subvert others. These are a few theories that we looked at.


Levi-Strauss Binary Opposition that tension is based on opposition or conflict e.g. good and evil. This was a main influence for us as our film is the question of sanity and in the trailer it shows conflict between the villain 'Patient 13' who is clearly insane and the young boys who break into the house, who are sane. We displayed the chase and struggle between the two sides to build the tension in the trailer, therefore conforming to the theory.


Barthes Enigma Code the theory that a film establishes mysteries as it goes on and makes the audience ask questions. This was a very important one for us to look at as we wanted the audience to ask themselves questions about our film and to involve mysteries, however we needed to distort the answers to ensure that their interest was held.


Todorov's Theory this is that all films start with an equilibrium which then is suddenly taken to a disequilibrium and then finally the conflict is resolved and the film ends with equilibrium again. Our trailer however is different from this theory as it ends in disequilibrium. This is the case with most horror teaser trailers as the ending would be given away if the conflict were to be resolved, it also keeps the audience on the edge as there is no visible solution showing, which is a convention of a good teaser trailer.


Aristotle's Unities is that a story/film should all take place in the same time moving toward a logical ending. We however subverted this theory as, because of our quick editing of shots out of chronological order, the audience would not be able to find a logical ending as it was not shown and the plot was hazed.