While studying ‘advertising’ in new films, I tried to research and look for conventions of a typical horror trailer.
Some of the things that seemed common in most of the horror trailers that I watched, were that they all lasted 1-3 minutes (depending on the type of advert, e.g. a quick short one to grab viewers attention - mainly shown on TV, or a longer one - giving more information, tends to be shown in a cinema). They also tends to be around 100 cuts, given pleasure (from the conventions of the genre) and also creating suspense, this is used through enigma codes and makes the audience asks questions, who? Why are they killing?…
Adverts tend to contain the distributor and the production’s logo and sometimes a unique selling point. For example, the USP in scream was the director, Wes Craven who was famous for his ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’. Trailers have a series of quick and exciting sequences that have been extracted from the film itself that are full of suspense. The main purpose is to get the targeted audience to watch the film therefore the advert has to be ‘colorful and interesting’ and edited together as ‘bait’ (Lasky)
The ad will also set up a situation and leave the viewer wanting more. It will contain quick action shots, sometimes of the weapons showing the intended audience that it is promising ‘Blood’. This therefore promises audience repetition of known genre pleasures, for example in horror films, the trailer would be what is expected of that particular genre e.g. darkness, suspenseful music, blood, weapons and murder etc.
Trailers aim to make the viewer want to see the film, but give little of the plot or story-line away.
You need to name the trailers that you have analysed and put them (their link) onto your blog. Deconstruct three specifically in terms of camerawork, editing, mise-en-scene, sound and special effects.
ReplyDeleteOnce you have analysed them, draw together the conventions that are similar and say if you are going to use them in your work.
Do trailers tend to use a montage of images from the film that are not in chronological order?
Put the date and reference for Lasky's quote.