My horror trailer developed many of the forms and conventions of
the horror genre. The first form and convention we focused on was
cinematography. We used a wide variety of shots however we tried to pack our
trailer with many close ups and canted angles. My reasoning behind this was
that not only are both techniques highly conventional within the horror genre
but I find the reason behind this very effective. Both close up shots and
canted angles created a 'weird' view for the audience and, as usually we don’t
invade one another’s space, nor look at one another on an obscure angle, it
'messes' with our mind and adds to the element of uncertainty and 'weirdness' I
feel a horror trailer should have. We made sure these weren't the only shots we
took into consideration and so we used a range of medium and long shots too -
this helped keep our trailer exciting and entertained our audience as the same
kind of shots from the same angle would have been highly boring to watch.
Another form an convention I feel we used quite a lot of was a 'hand-held
camera'. The idea behind this came from a film both me and Seraphina watched in
order to spark some ideas - The
Blair Witch Project. We felt
with this being such a well-known, successful horror film ideas from it were
bound to work well within the genre of horror. The hand-held camera added a
sense of panic to the trailer which I feel again is highly important within
this genre because it allows the audience to feel suspense and fear which are
all essential if you were to make a 'good' horror film. I feel that horror is definitely
meant to pick on the audiences emotions and make them feel vulnerable and I
felt that using a hand-held camera makes the trailer seem more personal - as
though the audience could be holding the camera themselves or experience what
they are seeing on TV in a real life moment - making the trailer seem more
personal and therefore more 'scary'.
The Blair Witch Project Trailer
Handheld still from Jilted Handheld still from The Blair Witch Project
Another convention we used was a very small element of body
horror. We really didn't want to use fake blood or make our horror trailer into
a gory horror because our aim was to create a psychological and therefore we
kept this element very small. However, I feel that a slight bit of body horror
is needed to fit with the usual conventions of the horror genre. To do this -
when my character dies - we used makeup to create a gaunt look on my face. To
do this we simply placed some black eye shadow under my eyes with a little tint
of red. We felt that the red, depending on which type of horror fan our
consumer watching our trailer would be, could appeal to them either way,
whether a gory or psychological fan. The red could connote blood, which would
appeal to a more body horror, gory fan, but also could simply connote death, or
danger and add an element of realism to my ghostly character for a more
psychological viewer. The idea for the dark makeup around my eyes came from one
of my favourite psychological horrors: Insidious 2
Dark eye inspiration still - Insidious 2
My trailer fitted well with the horror
genre. I feel it is important to have a definite genre when it comes to horror
as I don’t feel like films with the genre of a 'Horror/Comedy' work as they are
both such opposing emotions. However - getting the genre right is incredibly
important. I researched in to Thomas Schatz - a man who has written books on film making and Studio System etc. He said that
"..a genre represents a range of expression for the filmmakers and a range
of experience for the viewers". The element of this quote that caught my
eye was 'a range of experience for the viewers'. In order to ensure that my
horror trailer was going to give my viewers the best experience that could get
and feel a variety of different emotions, I looked further into other horror
trailers to take ideas of pacing and music in order to create the type of
atmosphere I wanted. The first horror trailer I looked at was Psycho.
The first thing I noticed about this was that although the film
was old -1960- it still kept to the usual forms and conventions of a horror
trailer in terms of pacing. To make sure that the pacing of this trailer didn’t
just work well for the period of time that the film was made, I watched a more
'up to date horror trailer' to ensure that this effect of pacing to create
emotion wasn’t just a ‘context thing’.
Dawn of the Dead 2014 Trailer
After watching this trailer I realised that a pacing structure of
'slow, quick, slow, jump scare' really worked well with effecting the audiences
emotion as it used slow shots to a quick montage of shots to create suspense
and shock. The use of collision cutting is to provoke emotion and so listening
to what Schatz had said I felt that it was essential to create panic. The
pacing of my trailer ensured that it stuck to the horror genre.
I think that another thing that helped
ensure that my trailer remained within the horror genre was the non-diegetic
music. Music is highly important within horror - I find that if you mute a
horror trailer and watch it immediately at least half of its impact is lost
because the music brings such a huge amount of suspense and fear to the
audience. Choosing the music was difficult because a lot of 'scary' tunes are
very 'over the top' which I felt almost added a sense of ‘fake-ness’ and
sarcasm to their product. I feel that psychological horrors are very classy and
therefore the non diagetic music had to be taken seriously, and tweaked enough
so that other audio elements could still be clearly heard.
Auteur Influences -
Darren Aronofsky: All of Aronofsky's films
share one similar link - an element of addiction. I find this very interesting
in itself and so watch a couple of his films, such as Black Swan and The Wrestler to learn a
little more about his auteur work. His obsession with
'addiction' definitely influenced me with the main male protagonist within
my trailer. As a character he definitely shows elements of addiction or a
'creepy obsession' to his girlfriend - ending up with his fixation on her going
too far resulting in her death.
Context -
I feel that within our generation 'lovers'
as such are quite a big element of our life. In order to make a horror film
scarier I feel that an audience member should be able to relate to it and,
thinking about our generation, the thing I noticed most about us all is that
the majority of us are all in relationships or at least searching for one. I
feel that this is where our main idea for the two lovers to argue and for the
male protagonist to kill his girlfriend came from - the idea that as a
generation we are all too obsessed with 'finding a boyfriend/girlfriend' that
we can lose the true values in life. Therefore, having an element in our
trailer that linked two people together I felt would widen our target audience
as consumers tend to view things that they can relate with.
'Realtionship' still from my trailer.
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