Binary Opposition

What is Binary Opposition?

"the principle of contrast between two mutually exclusive terms: on/off, up/down, left/right etc" (source - answers.com)


So, in relation to the horror genre that I am working on now, binary opposition examples would include good/evil, antagonist/protagonist, and secure/insecure.

This theory was developed by Roman Jakobson, who used the concept of 'binary features'.

In our media lesson, we have been applying the concept of binary opposition to camera controls. Using the camera, we have applied the binary opposition concept to a change in character. However, there are main features of the camera that we had to identify before we start to consider applying binary opposition.

The aperture - This is the middle hole of the camera, which is able to widen and narrow itself to adjust the amount of light that comes into the camera.

The way of manipulating how much light comes into the camera is to change the F-stock setting of the camera. The smaller the F-stock camera number, the less light is allowed into the camera (hole gets smaller), and it allows for a wider depth of field.
Depth of field is how much of the shot is in focus.  A narrow depth of field means only certain bits of a shot is sharpened in the foreground, and the background is mainly blurred out. A wide depth of field means that everything in the shot including the background is sharpened and in focus.

 

The top image represents a picture with narrow/shallow depth of field (as you can see some figures being blurred out). The bottom picture shows everything in focus, so it represents a wide depth of field.

How can this be represented in our trailer?

Blurring in and out can show the contrast between good and evil. For example, there could be a shot in our trailer where there is a casual scene, where everyone is getting along in their day to day lives. However, this can be shown in a narrow depth of field. It can then be manually manipulated to focus in on a figure which represents evil, such as a ghost in the background. The casual scene can represent good (as it's the status quo), whereas the ghost in the background can represent evil, and foreshadow disruption.