Treatement

 The analysis of posters and trailers has helped me get an idea of what my teaser trailer should be like. The questionnaire has also helped me to see what others expect in a thriller trailer.

Title: The Frozen Truth

Narrative: This film explains the conspiracy theory surrounding the Titanic “accident”. The White Star Line, owners of the Titanic, also owned a sister ship called Olympic. This ship was damaged in a crash but wasn’t insured, so an already poor company faced a huge loss of money. The conspiracy theory claims that the Olympic was switched with the Titanic, which was insured, was slightly patched up and then crashed on purpose to get money. It also claims that the British Government helped to cover up the plot, due to the owner of White Star Line also owning the company providing the Government with steel for war weapons.

The audience can expect another side to the Titanic incident as the word Frozen links to the ships’ fate and the iceberg which is what caused the ship to sink. The word Truth links it to the story.

The narrative does follow the Todorov’s conventions of equilibrium, disequilibrium, and equilibrium as known facts of the Titanic accident are shown (numbers of people on board, fatalities, etc.), then a new theory is revealed, and the theory is explained.

Originally, the characters wer going to be the CEO of White Star Line and a couple of his employees. However due to complications on the day of filming I had to cut down to the CEO and one employee, and give the lines of the 2nd employee to the 1st one, on top of his own.

One of Propp’s stock characters is present in my narrative, the villain, as in the CEO of White Star Line. He could also be perceived as a false hero, as he’s trying to save his company.

Levi Strauss’ Binary Opposition theory is relevant to an extent, as in the opposition of good and evil, and also right and wrong concerning the plot, and the choice between human lives and the fate of a large company.

My trailer will follow Barthe’s enigma Code since I don’t intend to reveal every detail about the plot, therefore keeping the audience's attention and intrigue. Also, Titanic will only be seen and said once. Once again, the final trailer will only feature the word Titanic, not the ship itself. This is because I couldn't film it in water as I'd intended, due to the airfix model I bought for this shot and the poster. Even the manufacturers claimed there was no way of making it float.