In terms of marketing the purpose of a film trailer is to
sell the film to its audience. Conventionally the trailer introduces the
equilibrium of the film’s diegesis, before quickly transitioning to the event
of the film, attempts of resolution and identifying key characters of the film
(good and evil), displays a variety of different camera shots and typically in
a horror trailer the shots and soundtrack start off slower and pick up speed
and ramp up the tension as the trailer progresses. In Eighteen the preferred
reading we wanted the audience to receive was a chilling, unsettling feel about
the film and to be thrilled and on edge throughout. We felt the need to follow
generic conventions of the horror genre such as jumpscares as historically
these have proven successful, but also wanted to push the boundaries and be
unique as we felt this would separate our trailer from others and generate more
interest towards our trailer as opposed to just playing it safe. In the trailer
for Eighteen there is no correlation between narrative structure within the
trailer as it is done in a way that leaves the audience clueless as to who the
victims or murderer/killer is.
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| Eighteen trailer |
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| Don't Breathe trailer |
It's incredibly important to include a title within the
trailer so the audience know what the film is called, this gives them the
information they need to see it in cinemas. Like most conventional horror
trailers our title is at the end of the trailer because it’s the last thing
about the trailer that is imprinted in their mind, meaning that they can
research it. However, not every horror trailer does this, horror film Don’t
Breathe has the title at the start of the trailer, which could be seen as
direct address to the audience.
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| Eighteen trailer |
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| The Bye Bye Man trailer |
Jumpscares are used within horror trailers to shock the
audience and give them a rush of adrenaline whilst watching, this is to give
them a taste of the horrors that will be included within the actual film. The
jumpscare included in our trailer is placed in a way that would make the
audience feel scared as there was a build up of fast pace action followed by a
scene of a candle being blown out which then led to a loud noise and a scary
face being shown to viewers. The jumpscare in our trailer is at the end of the
trailer to leave the audience feeling scared on edge after watching the
trailer, although jumpscares can happen at any given point of the trailer, for
instance, in The Bye Bye Man trailer, there are jumpscares throughout from
start to finish.
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| Eighteen trailer |
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| It trailer |
Typical narrative structure of horror films begins in a
bright, positive state of normality and gradually gets darker and scenes tend
to get cut faster and action unfolds. In our trailer, the equilibrium at the
beginning is of four friends drinking to celebrate one of the characters
eighteenth birthday and as the trailer progresses the shots get shorter and
features scenes of violence, gore and frightened expressions. An example of a
trailer that follows this narrative structure is It, the trailer begins with
what looks like two brothers acting normal and hugging and then in the other
scene it is a still shot of a group of young boys about to be attacked by a
killer clown. Not all horror films follow this structure, an example that shows
this would be The Crazies, which starts with apocalyptic scenes and then
flashes back to current time and then the audience as the apocalyptic state
begins.
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| Eighteen trailer |
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| Cabin in the Woods trailer |
In almost every horror film there is a trend in reoccurring
character types which appear within the film and trailers usually identify
these character archetypes clearly so that the audience knows who’s who. Our
trailer doesn’t give the audience a clear understanding of who exactly the
victims or killers are from watching the trailer making it so they are
confused, meaning that they will have to watch the film to understand what they
are watching. We did this so it would leave audience members wondering about
what they’d seen and have to rewatch the trailer to try and piece together more
information. Cabin in the Woods gives its audience a clear identification of
character types, we can see from watching the trailer that the teenagers are
the victims and we are shown scenes of them being attacked.
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Eighteen trailer
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| The Boy trailer |
Horror trailers tend to start off with bright, ambient
colours in a naturalistic setting and as the scenes progress into the action,
they tend to lose saturation becoming darker, this is usually to signify the
darkness of the plot taking over the film. In our trailer we followed this
structure as we wanted to get across the idea of happiness within the
friendship group and create a greater contrast between the happiness and
suffering, this was to shock audiences. The Boy follows this theme by starting
off outside the mansion in the daylight with a blue sky backdrop to show
calmness and equilibrium, later throughout the trailer we see the inside of the
mansion and it noticeably darkens to show the darkness within the film.
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| Eighteen trailer |
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| Annabelle trailer |
A camera angle we decided to use quite frequently within our
trailer was the Extreme Close Up angle, we do this to make the audience feel
uneasy throughout the trailer, for example, one of our ECUs was of one of our
characters gasping underwater, this makes the audience member feel like they
are in that situation with her. Extreme Close Ups are conventional of the
horror genre as this is not a typical way that you would look at somebody so it
is uncomfortable for the audience, an example of an ECU being used within a
horror film is Annabelle, when it zooms in on the doll with a drop of blood
running from her eye, this is to make the audience feel nauseous.
In comparison to real horror trailers our trailer has no
dialogue in it and only background noises, one of the background noises we used
was a high pitched piano noise which was playing in the tune of “Happy
Birthday”, we did this to get across the idea that the film Eighteen is based
on someone’s birthday, we wanted to do this so the audience were clear from the
trailer, and a rumbling noise to get across the theme of horror as it builds
tension throughout the trailer leading to a jumpscare, this technique is used
by many professionals when creating a trailer. The pace of the background
noises in the trailer gradually picks up pace as the trailer progresses, this
is to show how from the equilibrium, the intensity of scenes advances within
the film so we displayed this within our trailer. Cabin in the Woods is an
example of a horror trailer with lots of dialogue which helps to build the
narrative of the film, which is just as effective as a trailer with very little
dialogue such as our own if executed properly, whereas Alien is a trailer with
no dialogue which was successful.
In terms of professionalism and genre conventions, I believe
that Eighteen fits horror genre conventions well and considering we had no
budget and the time we had to construct the trailer I think that Eighteen is
considerably professional in the sense of the technologies and equipment used.
In terms of being professional we used a GoPro for underwater scenes, filmed
the rest on a DSLR video camera and edited on Adobe Premiere Pro on a Mac. An
instance in which our trailer met conventions of the horror genre would be our
use of Special FX make up to create realistic wounds.
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