Propp's Theory

I found this information about Propp on Wikipedia, and thought it really interesting. His ideas about the limited number of possible characters really ties in with our trailer.

Vladmir Propp was a russian formalist scholar who analyzed basic plot components in Russian Literature. He was born in 1895 in St Petersburg, Russia and attented St Petersburg University majoring in Russian and German philosophy. Vladmir Propp in 1932 became a member of the Leningrad University faculty until 1970 the year of his death.

Propp's theory was that there were only ever 7 characters to every storyline.

In all 100 tales he analyzed he came to the conclusion that the characters are:

- The Villian - evil behind the plot

- The Donor - helps the hero out in time of need

- The (magical) Helper - also helps the Hero

- The Princess and her Father - gives the task for the hero to participate in

- The Dispatcher - sends the hero off to the quest
- The Hero or Victim/ Seeker Hero - reacts the Donor, weds the Princess

- (False Hero) - takes credit for Heros actions.

In our media film we have used 3 of these characters in our storyline:

The Hero - unlikely, glasses, nerd - school student

The Donor - in the beginning its the Teacher but in the end role is reversed with Care-taker

The Villian - in the beginning its the Care-taker but in the end role is reversed with Teacher.

In present day films and literature, I still believe that Propp's theory is correct and backed up, however their roles during films change a lot more then they used too - the hero used to stay the hero during the whole film, however people nowadays people like to be shocked and confused so having such a straight forward character development would annoy most people, so the roles during the films often change to shock and suprise people. However there are a lot of people who like the idea of knowing each character's roles as it is simple, people like the feeling of pride of knowing the story before it has been told, or guessing how it might end.

What Film Mag You Ask?

I have chosen to have our film published into the Film magazine 'Sight and Sound': there are many reasons for this. I believe that 'Sight and Sound' is the most well known and biggest film magazine that deals with independent movies like ours. Our film would get good coverage and attention from audiences; 'Sight and Sound' sometime deals with Hollywood mainstream films such as "Inglourious Basterds", this shows that the magazine do have a good budget and wide experience in the film industry. I believe that our film could make it to the front cover as 'Sight and Sound' enjoy new raw talent film makers and would jump at the idea of a horror film made by Amateurs. I have read 'Sight and Sound' and I find it easy to read, the articles are well written and to the point, using understandable language and I can tell that its a magazine that loves film and wants to show them off and "advertise" them in their mag.

After looking at 8 'Sight and Sound' covers I have discoveredthat the layout for the magazine consists of one main image taking up the whole cover - the image also consists of just one person, usually either an actor or director, e.g (David Lynch, Johnny Depp). The image
of the actor is usually of them in costume from their role in the upcoming film or an actual image of the actor in the film, E.g Johnny Depp in both 'Public Enemies' and 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'. The picture of the director is usually just them looking at the camera with their namesnext to them (Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch) so people recognise them. The text of a 'Sight and Sound' magazine is minimal, usually just the title of the main article in big colourful bold letters stretched along the bottom, and a sentence underneath backing up and explaining the main title; there is usually text going down the left side (flagging up other articles in the magazine), interviews, reviews or whatever else might be in the magazine. The barcode and title have been placed top left and right hand corners respectively in recent 'Sight and Sound' magazines as shown above- however in earlier additions the bar code was bottom right.In all the magazine I've looked at the main title 'Sight and Sound' has always been on a yellow square block in black writing placed at the top left corner of the magazine. This makes the magazine title stand out as its the brightest thing on the cover.
The target audience for 'Sight and Sound'is for people who have a lot or at least a good working knowledge knowledge of film and the film industry as the content of the magazine uses many media terms that not everybody will know. I would say its aimed at older people, maybe 18 upwards and anyone who is interested in film. The way it is a subscribtion based magazine shows that only people with film interest would want to subscribe. The fact that 'Sight and Sound' is still popular and has stayed in business for so long, shows that there are still manyof keen film lovers out there in the UK.

Sight and Sound Magazine Research


It was first published by the British Film Industry in 1932.
It is a monthly issue magazine.
Sight and Sound is a subcription based magazine, you can not buy issues in stores.
Previous editors: Gavin Lambert, Penelope Houston, Philip Dodd and currently by Nick James.

Todorov's Theory

Tzetan Todorov is a famous French philosopher born March 1st 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria, who is well-known for his published literature and particularly for his theory, not only in media terms but for all types of literature . He has written a total of 21 books about human sociology and how humans and the world work and link with each other. Todorov's theory however has been criticized by a science fiction writer called Stanislaw Lem. He criticized Todorov in not taking in enough literature to back up his theory, by not including the works of science fiction writers HG Wells and Jules Verne.

Todorov's theory is that every storyline has a begininning, middle and resolution or as he put is
- Equilibrium - everythings equal and fine
- Disequilibrium - the story encounters problems and isn't equal
- Equilibrium - everything is fine and equal again in the end

Our film:
- Equilibrium - everythings fine
- Disequilibrium - children go missing
-Disequilibrium - wrong person is killed, teacher gets away with it.


Our story however does not go along with Todorov's theory as we have show two different time periods during the film. We have the normal present day which goes along in the right chronological order,which is represented in normal colours, with no distortions - this would be the main storyline that covers most of our film. Then we have a incident from the past being shown at ramdon intervals during the trailer - these would only be in one location and shown on camera as blurry and distorted to show the audience the time and story change. This was inspired heavily byChristopher Nolan's film "Memento" in which the story is shown backwards with two different time sets clashing. There are many films out there which do not relate to Todorov's theory such as:
- The Butterfly Effect (2004) directed by Eric Bress
- The Prestige (2006) directed by Christopher Nolan
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) directed by Michel Gondry
These films are very rare however and for the most part hugely successful as I think that audience are quickly bored with the normal storyline structure and expect and enjoy beingconfused and thrilled when watching a film that isn't too predictable. This is why I think are trailer would be successful as it's something different and new that people can enjoy and they won't predict what happens. So the storyline is inspired by "Memento" however the ending, in our case is known as a "Twist Ending", is an ending which shocks and confuses the audiences, I was greatly Inspired by M Night Shayamalan "Sixth Sense" in which the story structure follows Todorov's theroy, however in the end a suprise is released on the audience when you find out that the main character has been in fact dead for the whole film; now the audience could not predict this, this is why I believe "Sixth Sense" is as famous and popular as it is today because of the ending. Also I believe that 'twist' endings are probably becoming more widelyused in the film industry today- some hugely successful films which use twist endings are:
- Fight Club (1999)Directed by David Fincher
- The Usual Suspects (1995) directed by Bryan Singer
- Saw (2004) directed by James Wan
Again.. all well-known and critically acclaimed because of their spectacular endings. This is something I hope our film would be, as the killer is not who you expected it to be, you build up love and trust during the film for the Teacher, then lose all respect and trust for him in the end when you find out he is the killer. This hopefully will shock audiences and make them enjoy our film even more.

Production and Distribution Company

I have chosen to have Pathe as my film's production and distribution company; the reason for this is that Pathe deals a lot with small budget films, or film directors that are not big in the industry and are making films that perhaps are unknown to the public. However Pathe is alos very well known in the UK as it has had a few really big successes in "The Blair Witch Project", "Topsy Turvey" and the multi-Oscar winning "Slumdog Millionaire". Pathe is more well known for distributing films rather than producing films, but at our stage of film making we cannot be too picky and need to take what we can have, and look for who are most likely to want to help produce our film - and I believe that would be Pathe.

Pathe is one of the longest surviving film distribution companies starting in 1896 by French brothers Charles, Emile Theophile, and Jacques Pathe.

Pathe do not only deal in cinema and movies they also work in Cable and Satellite - Television Networks.

Real Life Inspiration - Soham Murders

One of the real-lfe events which influenced my film was the high profile murder case in August 2002 of two 10 year old girls in Soham, Cambridgeshire. The victims were Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The convicted killer was a local school caretaker - Ian Huntley. The murders particularly horrified people, as Huntley was in a position of trust, and used the fact that the girls knew him from school.


Shortly before the murders on 4 August 2002 at around 18:15, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had attended a barbecue at Holly's family home. They then went out to buy some sweets. On their way back they walked past Huntley's rented house in College Close. Huntley asked them to come into the house. He said that Carr, his girlfriend, was in the house as well, although in fact she had gone to visit family back in Grimsby. Shortly after Holly and Jessica entered 5 College Close, Huntley murdered them.
Huntley's reasons for committing the murders may never be known, but minutes before seeing the girls, Huntley had slammed the telephone down on Carr, after a furious argument. Huntley had allegedly suspected Carr of cheating on him. The police suspected that Huntley killed the girls in a fit of jealous rage. There may have also been a sexual motive. It seems likely that either, or possibly both, of these motives drove Huntley to kill the girls - the police found no evidence of pre-meditation.

Above: a picture of convicted murderer and care-taker Ian Huntley.

Below: picture of the two 10 year old girl victims Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Poster Inspiration

This poster relates to our film as it has a school based theme; the children in the poster are roughly the same age as the children portrayed in our film; they are wearing school uniform in a 'upper class', public school manner- shirts ,ties and short hair. The colour scheme is dark red which in this poster stands out with the black and white background - the red here symbolizes blood and danger rather then lust and passion which it can also show; you can tell it means danger and death by the black background. The black and white relates to such films as "Sin City" and "Natural Born Killers" which are inspiration to our film as well. I believe the reason the main image is black and white is to help show all the students looking the same, this shows order and unity in the group as there is no difference; the teacher, however, in the image is wearing black which shows him to be outside of the group and away from the order and unity. The black and white also shows darkness and uncertainty which is what the film is mainly about. Our idea for our poster is a black school blazer covered by a hand, but on the hand is dark red blood, so the main colours used in our poster is red and black - the same as this poster. Also the only text on the poster is the title and a one sentence sub title, which is the same amount of text that our poster will use. The white writing also stands out to the dark background, the review and tag line are both white and stand out

The reason why the reviewer said "a cross between 'A Clockwork Orange' and 'Lord of the Flies" is because they are both well known films and most people are expected to be able to refernece them before watching this; as this is a Japanese film people would want to know in the UK which Britsh/American films it is mostlike before watching it. The tagline "Could you kill your best friend" is a catchy and funny rhetorical question; it also, in the one sentence, reveals to the audience the genre of the film and that it is in fact going to contain death and killing, rather then a usual school drama.

Trailer Analysis

The opening of the 'Evil Dead' trailer (1982), starts in utter darkness with just a dark black shot; this makes the audience curious about what is happening and leaves them witha false sense of security. However, the only sound you can hear is a tape recorded voice of an old man, which in itsself is creepy, he is acting as if a comentator telling the audience what is happening, even though we can't see anything, making us want to view what he is speaking even more, building up tension and fear- during his speech you can hear a heart beat. To the audience this builds up fear, - the heart beat is at a steady pace, this could be because of fear or nerves, the audience's hearts would also be beating at the same sort of pace as the sound in trailer - they are in blackness listening to the gruesome things an old man is saying on a tape recorder. The man in his speech uses typical 'horror' language, making the speech more terrifying, for example he uses words like "dark shadows moving in the woods", "ressurrected" and "come calling... for me", all of these sayings are very spooky. Then it goes quiet, and the film title comes forward from the back and into the audience's face in clear bold white letters saying "Evil Dead".This makes the audience sudden;yaware of what they are watching- when the title comes hurtling towards the front of the screen, creepy eerie music starts playing, quite fast-paced and in-your-face sort of music- violins and trumpets , building up suspense and fear in the audience.