Todorov's Theory

In  class, we learnt Todorov's Narrative Theory, which did cause a little bit of confusion at first but now, I think I have fully grasp the concept of it. 

For example: There are 5 different stages of an event which occurs within a movie. 

1.  Equilibrium
2.  Disruption
3.  Recognition of Disruption
4.  Attempt to repair
5.  Reinstatement of Equilibrium   

They all are set within an event which may occur in the exact order, or one could not be included. 

The description of each stage are: 

1.  Setting Established- Key characters introduction.
2. Oppositional (antagonist) character appears and the story takes part in a particular direction.
3.  Lives of the character and the events interwove. The tension gets built up throughout this entire section. 
4. The attempt to repair is where the tension is at its HIGHEST POINT as the change in dynamic follows. 
5. Matters are all solved and questions at the start are then answered. 

Todorov's theory is convenient for our next media task which my teacher has set and that is to base our group's opening sequence on Todorov's Theory. 
Todorov is actually a Russian theorist which suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure, this is where all the stages come into this because it's a representation of balance and progress as something comes along to disrupt the equilibrium and then eventually it gets resolved and restored.

During the lesson, we had to make up our own Todorov, here's my example:

 

1. First character introduced after an Establishing Shot of an abandoned house which pans to a medium close up of the character who then gets hit around the head unexpectedly (Night time set)

2. Character wakes up with an left angled blurred Eyeline Match, which will represent that the protagonist is lying down. The location would be different to where a room is full of smashed china dolls which are scattered around the protagonist with candles also around him. The shot will then be introduced again as an Eyeline Match but in a Crab shot view of what appears to be the Antagonists' feet which will be walking towards the protagonist. 

I didn't decide to continue with the todorov's theory because as a group, we decided to interpret each others own ideas:

Stage 2: the main character is running with out looking back

Stage 1: the main character stops and has a breather and a flashback

Stage 3:the main character gets hit round the head with a baseball bat by an unknown character and captured. then the man wakes up surrounded by candles

Stage 4,5: not used due to length of clip

 

Stage 4 and 5 within our opening sequence, we took the Attempt to repair and the Reinstatement of Equilibrium out of our plan because we didn't want our opening sequence to be the cliche psychological thriller where the ending results in a 'happy ending', which is why we removed these stages.