Horror Trailers

This piece of work was a joint effort with Kelly Pointer.

Rob Zombie's Halloween...


Rob Zombies trailer for his remake of the the 1980 film Halloween. This advert features many conventions of a movie trailer; firstly the use of production values. Director Rob Zombie is a relatively well known horror director, and is used as a pulling feature of this film - it is even named after him! This shows how a director can attract an audience to a film, even if the actors are that well known, they are not even named in the trailer. The music is also keeping to the genre, being creepy and monotonous, it connotes mystery and the unknown. However, it does not build up in this trailer, it is more the sound mix which builds to create suspense. This trailer also features a voice over which speaks in clauses over the visual stimulus. The sentences are broken into simple clauses, which again help to create suspense. The voice is also the generic, deep, male voice common to move trailers. The speaker begins by reading inter-titles from 12 seconds into the trailer. Conventions of the film that this trailer advertises also fit into the horror genre. The editing of the clip is features many close ups of the actors faces, sometimes when not in close up, there is a medium shot of other people. Most sequences in the trailer feature people in distress. The pace of the edit is very swift, giving the trailer a very fast pace. Also, cuts use a bleed technique which sees the footage fade to black quickly before the next shot quickly bleeds back in, giving quite an unsettling feel. Also, the position of the camera is stationary for most of the close ups, however those where action is taking place, or emotion being portrayed, the camera shifts slightly, again in an unsettling way, which shows the characters as vulnerable and emphasises the state they are in. The setting also seems conventional to a horror film. Although mostly in suburban environments and houses, which do feature heavily in horror films. At 1.03 what appears to be a shed or barn wall is collapsing on the antagonist, this has been a common setting for horror films since its origin. A knife plays a very important part in the trailer. A weapon commonly used in the iconography of horror films.

The Last House On The Left...


Conventions of this trailer which conform to other trailers are firstly the use of inter-titles. They appear regularly but are not voiced over by a narrator. This may be done to give the audience a feel of seperation from the characters, as the words they see just describe their fate. Whereas in the previous trailer, the titles were read by a booming, dominating voice which could just have been used to make the film seem more of a crowd pleaser, rather than a twisted thriller. The music plays a vital part of creating the atmosphere in this trailer. To begin with, the music is gentile but mysterious and eerie, putting the audience into the right fram of mind for the trailer. This music stops at around the 0.30 minuet mark, where there is no music for a while - this gives a sence of realism to the attacks and the pressure that the victims are under. However, when things start to take a turn for the worst in the trailer, the music changes. Sweet Child O' Mine [a cover version by Taken By Trees] is played while the audience see various gilmpses of attacks and how the victims deal with them. This creates a juxtaposition between the actions and the music, possibly revealing the deranged nature of the actions of the antangonists. Also, this trailer demonstrates the genre straight away, using a secluded lake side house as a setting. Throughout the trailer we also see a boat house, and the forest. Again, a knife makes up part of the iconography, this can be seen at 0.40 seconds into the trailer. However a gun also appears, this is seen more often than the knife, possibly suggesting how the trouble makers are a new breed, a modern breed, compared to Mike Myers from Halloween. This film also conforms to horror conventions by including a young family in the narrative. The characters we see are all youthful, even the parents, making us sympathise with them and associate ourselves with them.