To get to grips with how a
horror trailer would usually look in order to make ours effective as possible,
we all deconstructed several appropriate trailers from films that linked well
to our concept.
We found that a general
structure for the trailers started with equilibrium to give the audience a
false sense of security followed by disequilibrium at the climax. We used this
convention by beginning the trailer with the victims on a usual day before they
are captured, which is when the disequilibrium begins with uncomfortable and
disturbing images of their torture.
This is also when it begins to
change pace from slow to fast-paced.
Our trailer also finishes with
a scare after the title & release date which is conventional for horror (see picture below)
Slasher horrors use lots of
disgusting images including blood and gore which is achieved in our trailer
through use of 'Chelsea Grin’ make-up and the action of hammering a nail into a
victim’s eye (see picture below)
We developed this convention by
not showing too many shots of the actual torture as it creates a big impact
when the torture is suggested and the horror is left to the imagination. (see
The Loved Ones Trailer)
We didn’t sacrifice any gore though as we used close-up shots of live maggots
covering mouldy food for added disgust.
Not showing too much of the
storyline is important to a teaser trailer as it’s simply meant to entice the
audience and develop hype before the theatrical trailer is released.
In terms of typography for the
titles, we decided to subvert the stereotype of blood-red and chose pink to relate to the antagonist’s
girly personality that makes her an unexpected villain (see below)
In modern horror films, the
type of character who’d be stereotyped as weak or innocent has become the
villain and in some cases used to create scares, for example scary children
(Orphan, The Ring).
We decided to conform to this
new trend and use a teenage girl as the antagonist which is essentially subverting the typical stereotype of a killer.
Using a young girl as this type
of villain is unexpected because of the media’s representation of women as the
victims.
It’s not unusual for the female
antagonist to be sexualised, however we decided to
subvert this stereotype by giving our antagonist child-like qualities that
develop on the typical creepy child (done through sound of jewelry box, mise en scene and her costume)
As part of the equilibrium at
the beginning of the trailer, we used a recording of a jewellery box which
conforms to child-like/creepy/chilling sounds (blog-post); we then developed
the convention by reversing the sound so it became very distorted to reflect
the manic main character
Throughout trailers, a
‘booming’ noise can be heard on reveals which is what we included in our
soundtrack by adding a synthesized drum beat when the titles appear
When looking at trailers for
inspiration for a soundtrack, we found that horror trailers used layered sound
effects rather than a song; therefore we did the same using Logic for the manic
scenes in our trailer.
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