Narrative

How is our narrative established in our trailer and ancillary texts?

One way in which our narrative was established was through Todorov's theory.

We showed the equilibrium of the narrative by introducing the protagonists and locations of our movie. This shows the original setting of the film, where all is normal. This is conventional to horror movies, as it hints to the audience that everything is how it is expected to be.

We then showed that there has been a disruption to the equilibrium. We chose to show this by including a news report based on a recent attack by a clown. The disruption is used to change the mood of the film by making the audience feel uncertain about what will happen later on in the film.

Following on from this, we showed the next stage of Todorov's narrative theory - the recognition of the disruption. This was shown in our trailer soon after the disruption. We showed a scene of the protagonists watching the news report on the clown. As the audience empathise with the protagonists of a film, they will now share the fear and worry that they are feeling, after the recognition of the clown attacks.

Due to it being a trailer, we chose not to show the final two stages of Todorov's narrative theory - the attempted repair of the damage and disruption and the return to the equilibrium. We feel that showing these stages would reveal too much of our film's  plot.

Our ancillary texts help sell our product with our film trailer as they introduce our audience to the main characters and background storyline of our production.