To begin our project, we had to start producing a production team name. After playing around with different ideas, we finalized on the name 'paranoia productions'. This came from the group discussion from which we had organized 2 main ideas for a storyline and plot for our chosen style of horror film. As we expanded our collaborative ideas we started to narrow down what makes a horror teaser trailer successful, what type of audience we want to promote our film trailer towards and how we can use our knowledge of existing trailers to develop our understanding and eventually put it into practice when we begin filming ourselves.
We mind mapped our 2 favourite ideas and began to experiment with different possibilities and locations that could work for the trailer and the audience appeal. Features of a typical horror trailer include darkness, abandoned areas, little light, shrieking, rapid cuts and much more. To achieve the ultimate shots we began considering the dynamic of our trailer and what we wanted to include and what wouldn't necassarily work as well.
As we progressed we also began to consider looking at previous students trailers and what features we feel worked the best and could apply to the creation of our trailer. Insidently, we also discovered that rapid cuts and secretive shots, i.e. showing minimal action in the form of short bursts of footage worked really well. They also helped to emphasize the suspense and dramatics of the plot.
A trailer is a marketing tool used to advertise an upcoming film. It is a montage of shots, usually with a non-diegetic soundtrack and sometimes dialogue which lasts for around 2-3 minutes. The idea of a trailer is to reveal a basic plot whilst maintaining interest and so hopefully helping to sell the film by luring customers in to the cinema to watch it. The directors name, an actors name or even another film produced by the same studio might be mentioned in the trailer so that the audience's attention is grabbed by familiar films or people. A teaser trailer is a shorter trailer, anything from half a minute to a minute usually, which reveals only a glimpse of the storyline. The aim is to spark interest but with a mysterious element to keep the audience interested and awaiting the next, full trailer.
An example of a teaser trailer: Inception Teaser
An example of a full trailer: Inception Full Trailer
A trailer might be seen at the cinema before a film of a similar genre starts, on television or online. Television trailers are often only teaser or shorter versions of the full trailer, whereas cinema trailers are the full version. Online trailers of all variations can be easily found at any time on video sites such as youtube.com. The advantage of trailers is, unlike other forms of advertising such a posters, they can be used on television which shows the trailer unexpectedly and doesn't require the audience's effort.
The genre conventions of horror trailers is dark, low-key lighting, eerie music, jumpy parts and fast cuts. There might be a long cut or slow-paced editing at the start or end to build up the plot or end the plot with a disturbing final cut. There might be frightening costumes and special effects to make the horror stand out. The iconography of horror films includes weaponry, dark forests, isolated places, bad weather, distorted or mutated figures, a villain and a group of victims, pain and screams. Depending on the sub-genre there might be mythical creatures or certain weaponry involved (such as knives and axes for slasher films).
