VLADIMIR PROPP 31 FUNCTIONS

Vladimir Propp broke up fairy tales into sections. Through these sections he was able to define the tale into a series of sequences that occurred within the Russian fairytale. Usually there is an initial situation, after which the tale usually takes the following 31 functions. Vladimir Propp used this method to decipher Russian folklore and fairy tales.

I. Member of family absents self from home:

II. Interdiction announced:

III. Interdiction violated: 

IV. Villain tries to meet: 

V. Villain receives information: 

VI. Villain attempts trickery: 

VII. Victim deceived: 

VIII. Villain harms family: A

VIIIa. Member of family lacks or desires: a

IX. Hero approached about lack: B

X. Seeker decides on counteraction: C

XI. Hero leaves home: 

XII. Hero tested: prepares for magical agent: D

XIII. Hero responds to test of donor: E

XIV. Hero gets magical agent: F

XV. Hero transferred to object of search: G

XVI. Hero and villain in direct combat: H

XVII. Hero branded: J

XVIII. Villain defeated: I

XIX. Initial lack liquidated: K

XX. Hero returns: 

XXI. Hero pursued: Pr

XXII. Rescue of hero from pursuit: Rs

XXIII. Unrecognized, hero arrives home or other country: o

XXIV. False hero: L

XXV. Difficult task: M

XXVI. Task resolved: N

XXVII. Hero recognized: Q

XXVIII. False hero exposed: Ex

XXIX. Hero given new appearance: T

XXX. villain punished: U

XXXI. Hero marries and ascends throne: W

We decided to use Propp template to create our own 31 Functions story. We thought that this will be very useful as although, we are only making a trailer and we do not need the whole full story it would be very good to use this as this clears and helps us organise our main visual idea. As we are still at a stage of planing ans we are not yet sure what our trailer will specifically consist of, I thought that by creating the whole story of our trailer it would help us to take different parts out that we think would be useful to use and further develop them into more specific scenes that we can then use for our trailer.

31 Functions

0 – Protagonist against government for a cure of leptospirosis

8 – Government refuses to cure the world from the virus

9 – Sebastian, the protagonist, turns against the government decisions

10 – He tries to hack the government to find the substance needed to complete the cure

11 – Sebastian leaves his job as a scientist

12 – Samantha, female antagonist that has worked with Sebastian but appears to be an agent working for the government, break into his house to try and take the information for the cure

13 - Sebastian meets with an old friend, Lucien that worked with him gives him information about where find the missing piece for the cure

14 – Sebastian is given a piece of paper about its location

15 – Sebastian arrives at the location

16 – Sebastian, Samantha, Lucien and Malcolm meet at the location for the missing piece of the cure. Malcolm is infected by the virus by Sebastian.

17 – Sebastian is wounded in the leg

18 - Samantha is killed by Lucien

19 - Sebastian and Lucien gain the missing piece for the cure

20 – Sebastian and Lucien go back to the lab to finish off the cure

21 – Malcolm tries to stop Sebastian and Lucien

22 – Lucien saves Sebastian from Malcolm but gets shot and dies

29 – Sebastian is given a higher position at his job

30 – Malcolm is defeated and dies from the infection. 

31 – Sebastian finds the cure for the disease.

The highlighted areas are the possible scenes that we intend to include into our trailer. By doing the 31 Functions it was a lot easier to pick up the parts that we wanted to include in our trailer as this way by know the whole story the consistency of the plot for our trailer would be a lot more successful. Also by knowing  the whole story we are able to a lot easily pick out the different parts of the movie that we want to include in our trailer instead of thinking what scenes we should film.