The genre I have chosen is thriller-horror. I have researched a variation of trailers in this genre. Ive look and older ones, newer ones, high budget, low budget. It is important to look a low budget trailers, because I can get more useful inspiration from it as my film will be extremely low budget. I wanted to work with the genre for a few different reasons. Firstly, the trailers of horrors have strong conventions, such as fades to black, atmospheric sounds being enhanced, sounds. Also they are often filmed indoors in regular places such as homes and sometimes outside in woods. Both these locations would be easy for me to film in. Also because there are lots of effects and editing skills that can be used to make a good horror-thriller trailer.
Horror trailers have many conventions. One example is there being music that builds up by getting louder and louder and more high pitch. Then it stops suddenly and it’s a black screen with a dramatic sound bite. Dialogue that is commonly used includes things like, ‘what do you want?’ and ‘Who’s there?’ and ‘Somebody help!’ Another convention is any chaos or disruption of normal life is highlighted and shown a lot. Another convention is titles and credits are used to break up the action. Also the title screens often have scary imagery such as spider webs and woods, or have a blue or grey colouring to them. Sound effects, such as twigs snapping and screams, are often enhanced and made louder. This creates a more eerie effect.
From watching many different horror/thriller trailers, i found there were many similarities between them. They mostly follow the three acts rule. This starts with establishing the genre, characters and setting. (most genres start with the establishing being peaceful, but horror often has hints of something being not quite right). The second act is the start of disruption of equilibrium. The final stage is struggle and chaos caused by the disruption of equilibrium. A good example for the three acts is ‘When a stranger calls’.
I also found that enigma has a very important role in making a good trailers. Especially is it is caused by contradictory information. For example in the trailer for the film ‘Shut in’ (which was then changed to ‘intruders’), the audience is manipulated to constantly change who they believe to be good and who they believe to be bad.
Another key feature in horror trailers that make them successful is the use of sound. In ‘shut in’, the very beginning has water being poured. It has been edited to make it very loud, this makes it more eerie. The use of sound bridges is very successful, especially when it is paired with a black screen. For example tense music building up, then black screen and silence, then a scream.
Pace of camera shots is also a very successful way of creating a tense trailer. Having a varied pace, is key to a successful trailer. It makes it less boring as there is variation and also slow, lingering shots are useful for tension and eeriness and a fast montage is creates tension, drama and emphasise terror. A good example of this is shown in a trailer for the film ‘Morgan’. It starts of slow with many lingering shots which are also used to establish the scene and start to explain parts of the story. Shots are less and less long and at the end is a very quickly edited montage. A countdown voice over saying, ‘9, 8, 7…’ creates even more tension.
Generally, what I found to make a good trailer in the horror/thriller genre is making sure it doesn't give much away. The ones which most make me want to watch the film, so are successful, seem to create more questions then it answers. It should confuse, but engage the viewer so they are curious enough in what happens, to go watch the film. I also found that the best trailers, are tightly edited. By this I mean that there should a clip should end as soon as the important bit in the clip is over. For example if someone says, ‘how could someone do this?’, the clip should end as soon as they said this. If not, the trailer seems to lose the thrill and feels more awkward.
Any points that I have picked up on making a trailer successful in this essay, I will try to put into my own trailer, as they are the key aspects of what I believe makes a good trailer.
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