The Conjuring (2013) trailer review

Name of film- The Conjuring
Genre- Horror
Year released-2013
Your mark after viewing- 8/10

What happened in the trailer?
The trailer is a scene trailer and starts by showing the family running into the house. After the studio logos, it cuts to the mother and children playing a game where the mothers blindfolded and searches around the house listening for clapping so she can find them. She stumbles into a bedroom with a wardrobe that opens by itself and a pair of hands emerges and claps. She searches in the wardrobe for a child but when she turns around the child runs into the room. There is an intertitle here. The next cut sees her sort out some laundry when she hears clapping. Upon investigating she hears a loud crash behind her as all the pictures on the wall have fallen down and childish laughter is heard. There is an intertitle here. She goes downstairs and hears clapping, before eventually heading towards to the basement as its door mysteriously opens. She peers in and turns on the light to see an empty room but before she leaves the door slams in her face and the light blows. She strikes a match and over her right shoulder a pair of hands emerges and claps next to her. The trailer end with a music box playing and the name of the film being displayed.

What positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are well fulfilled?
There were many positive aspects of this trailer that covered a variety of horror genre conventions. For example the trailer was set in a creepy location with moderately low key lighting to give the mise-en-scene creepy, dark, evil and lonely connotations to represent how horrible and haunted the house is. The trailer also features the restricted narration element of mise-en-scene by having a series of picture frames fall off a wall and clatter to the ground off shot. This connotes mystery and suspense, and coupled with the parallel music of mischievous childish laughter, it represents that supernatural forces are at work and haunting the family. The pictures shattering also acts as collision cutting between quiet and loud, ambient and parallel sound effects connoting that the shattering acts as a trigger for the ghost attacks and that the increased volume in music represents that as the trailer goes on the haunting will continue. The trailer also features contrapuntal music at the end with the music box. This music is out of place compared to the quick paced parallel music and has connotations of childhood and innocence. This isn’t the only example of collision cutting in the trailer as it goes from a slow paced montage when the pictures fall of the wall to a quick paced montage when the mother is investigating the house and the basement. When the door slams it returns to a slow paced montage, ready for the final jump scare and catch the audience off guard so they get connotations of fear and surprise. The trailer also features intertitles. The first reads “based on a true story” to connote fear and put audience on edge and represent it’s real. The second intertitle states it’s “from the director of Saw and Insidious” and connotes if you like these films you’ll like this one as it’s from the same auteur, James Wan. The trailer also makes use of the cinematography conventions of the horror genre.  Shaky handheld cam is used in the slow paced montage when the mother is blindfolded to connote stumbling and a physical instability whilst it’s used in the quick paced montage of investigating the house to build fear and tension with the shakiness connoting a mental instability from the ghost. This thus represents that handheld shots focus on an unsteadiness of character and try to make the audience feel uneasy.

Which aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?
I thought there wasn’t much that acted as disappointing or off putting for the target audience except the scene trailer only highlights one scene and doesn’t represent the entire film or the rest of the main characters like the Warrens who are key to the films narrative.

Why did it receive the mark you gave it?
It received the mark I gave it due to the wide use of horror conventions used in the scene trailer, through the use of cinematography, editing, sound and mise-en-scene. The trailer also has haunting connotations and makes the audience fear for the family and be afraid of the ghost we see so little of. 

Paranormal Activity (2009) trailer review

Name of the film- Paranormal Activity
Year released- 2009
Film genre- Horror
Your mark after viewing- 6/10

What happened in the trailer?
The trailer started by showing a queue of people about to enter a cinema to see Paranormal Activity. Once they’re all seated the film starts and we’re shown a variety of highlights form the film and we also get the narrative established and find out that a couple are living with a ghost who’s hauntings become progressively worse and intrusive and results in them setting up a camera in order to capture the actions as they unfold.  The trailer builds up a quick paced montage and ends in a jump scare where a body flies backwards towards the camera followed by giving “tour dates” for the film before its general release.

What positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are fulfilled well?
The trailer has clever and interesting aspects surrounding it including the usage of shaky handheld camera shots, a cinematography convention, in order to connote fear, uncertainty and represent that the characters are amateurs in filming, similar to the group in The Blair Witch Project (1999) who are an amateur group too. As the trailer progresses it, it returns to a motif of a wide shot with the couple lying in bed as different supernatural events happen around them. The return to this wide shot connotes it’s a central location for the narrative of the film. The trailer also features collision cutting, from a slow pace to a quick pace, when the bedroom door slams and connotes the start of a quick paced montage. The door slam also signals another collision cut between quiet and loud with a static noise that connotes interference and represents that the ghosts are intruding on the couple. As the trailer gets close to the end the static parallel music increases in volume representing that the ghosts are becoming more intrusive and haunting as the film would go on. The quick paced montage also features a heartbeat noise which picks up in pace, connoting fear, tension and anxiety and is parallel to the feelings felt by both the characters of the film and the audience. The intertitles also give positive reviews of the film connoting that it would be god to see as it’s received so much praise from different sources. The quotes are also small and readable so the audience can read them for the short time they’re on the screen.

What aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?
The unsuccessful, disappointing and off-putting aspects of the trailer for the target audience include the shots from inside the cinema where people are watching the film live. The reason this is off-putting is because you can the audiences’ heads illuminated by the green night vision light which distracts you from the movie footage. Due to the low key lighting of the cinema and the green light emitted, the high key cinema screen looks it’s been added in the editing process and makes the screen have connotations of being fake and amateur.
The trailer also ruins the only jump scares the film has to offer and shows of the scariest bits of hem film representing the fact that the audience will already be prepared to watch the film and won’t be as easily shocked or spooked by the film. On top of this the ghosts presence and attacks in the trailer weren’t scary enough and used a cliché of horror conventions to connote supernatural fear and suspense by using techniques like slamming doors, moving chandeliers and no footsteps in flour that’s been placed on the ground.

Why did it receive the mark you gave it?
Despite the fact it used a variety of horror conventions it also spoiled the main aspect of the narrative and didn’t leave much for the target audience to figure out. It also showed the main jump scare which appears at the end of the film, along with the other scariest pats of the film, meaning the audience won’t be as scared or shocked as they’ll have literally seen it all before. Also, like the Day of the Dead (1985) trailer, it also shows shots from inside a cinema which is very off-putting and distracting and draws the audience away from the action and horror of the film.

Class Research: Favourite Type of Horror

My personal favourite sub-genre of horror is psychological horror

Priest poster with feedback

Alien (1979) trailer review

Name of film- Alien
Genre- Horror
Year released-1979
Your mark after viewing- 9/10

What happened in the trailer?
The trailer starts by showing a rocky surface, resembling a planet’s surface but after zooming out to a wide shot it turns out to be an egg that cracks and emits a blue light. Following this, the trailer becomes a highlight trailer showing certain scenes from the movie before finishing on a shot of the Nostromo and the caption “In space, no one can hear you scream” before cutting to the name of the film.

What positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are well fulfilled?
There were many positive aspects of this trailer that covered a variety of horror genre conventions. The trailer featured a slow paced montage, in the form of the rocky egg with the planet like surface. This in turn reinforces the representation of the link between the alien being from a strange and uninhabited world and how it first appears in the film. This gives connotations of tension and suspense, to make the audience feel paranoid and uncertain about what’s going on. The trailer also had a quick paced montage, in the form of the highlighted shots from the film that are edited together to give connotations of excitement, mystery and fear.

This change between the quick and slow paced montage is collision cutting and happens at a point in the trailer when the egg cracks to emit a blue light connoting a supernatural fear and danger that then leads into the quick paced montage. The egg crack is also accompanied by a loud scream that also acts collision cutting between the quiet howling wind parallel music and the loud high pitched drone plus quickening heart beat that connotes fear and tension. The trailer ends with the parallel music cutting out rapidly and screaming taking its place as a shot of the Alien egg hatching appears representing that if the Alien hatches then it only results in screaming and fear. This representation of the Alien only making you scream plays with the tagline of the film; ‘In space no-one can hear you scream’. This tagline and the wide shot of the Nostromo ship in space gives the ideology that screaming is useless as there’s no-one there to help and gives connotations of hopelessness and futility.

The trailer also features shaky, handheld shots in a creepy location featuring low key lighting of someone running to connote fear of the unknown and keep the alien threat a mystery to the audience.

Which aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?
I thought there was little that acted as disappointing or off putting for the target audience except maybe the fact that the narrative isn’t explained at all in the trailer and could lead to confusion from the audience members.

Why did it receive the mark you gave it?
It received the mark I gave it due to the use of haunting parallel music, collision cutting and the fact that the narrative isn’t given away from the variety of the shots shown, giving the trailer connotations of mystery, horror and suspense and thus represents accurately the main ideologies of the film.

Stereotypical horror fan

Our stereotypical horror fan is a male called Gary Knights (left). His day job is being an a electrician but once he gets in from a hard day of fixing plugs and wiring sockets he likes to sit down and immerse himself in classic horror films like Night of the Living Dead, Psycho and The Shining. Apart from horror films Gary likes playing video games, either by himself or online with other people, playing guitar, going bowling or spending time with his girlfriend Liz Mendoza, pictured centre. He met Liz at a special screening of Troll 2 and after both disliking the film thought dating each other might be better. Gary dislikes few things as he is a hardened man from the levels of horror he’s watched but he most definitely dislikes romantic comedy films and broccoli along with having an up and down relationship with his clingy younger brother Keith who sometimes doesn't get the hint he isn't wanted.

Gary’s demographic profile concludes that he is a 28 year old, white British male at the upper end of the working class living in London. His psychographic is reformer as he tries to change the mainstream in an attempt to make the world a more positive place.

Moodboard

1- We have chosen to include the infamous killer Ed Gein within our mood board because we have decided to base our killer 'Father Crowthorne' on his innocent nature to the point where people contextually didn't suspect him. We feel that this change will have the ability to shock audiences more as opposed to having an outright killer.

2- Jekyll and Hyde is another ode to the idea of two sides to people in one persons body, this way we can really emphasise the idea of a monster character residing under the innocent and calming layer of a religious figure. Dr. Jekyll in the novel was a respected gentleman throughout the town, and people came to him for advice and services,  but little did they know he turned into a murderer after the transformation.

3-For the third image on our mood board, we chose to include a historical figure of Father Hans Schmidt of Germany. In 1913, Schmidt was having a sexual relationship with a housemaid, who he got pregnant. After finding out about this, Schmidt slit her throat and cut her up, disposing of her body in the East River. We chose to include him because we felt we could base our killer around Hans and his murderous intentions.

4- Norman Bates, is the sweeter side to a schizophrenic personality from Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) We have included Bates because much like the Hans Schmidt choice, we can base the sweeter side of our killer 'Father Crowthorne' around that. Hitchcock's choice of this innocent character made the 'big reveal' all the more satisfying for audiences, we hope to recreate that effect within our own horror trailer.

5- The graveyard is within our mood board for a couple of reasons, the first being that it is a typical location within the horror genre. At night it can be used as a very spooky and creepy location in which the main action of a horror movie can happen. As a group, we wanted to include a scene within a graveyard for an ironic reason as well as a sickening one for our audiences, the irony being people dying in a place where the dead are already buried. 

6- Our horror trailer is going to have a really Gothic feel to it, in the sense that we have a priest murdering "sinners"and this is why we have included one of the most influential horror writers to date. Edgar Allen Poe made it onto the mood board because his work is creepy and a good example for horror fans. We wanted to pay ode to Edgar Allen Poe by looking at his texts and possibly using some of his work to influence our creative process.

7- NUN (2005) is a movie about a ghost nun who has come back to haunt former students, we felt we should include this on our mood board because it's similar to what we want to do with the idea of a religious figure murdering for the sake of it, but rather than have an apparition doing the haunting, we want an actual serial killer.

8- For one of the highlights within our trailer, we wanted to have "holy water" burning away at a victim's face. If we are to do this then we need to recreate the effect with latex and the building up of layers using tissue paper. We needed to research into different horror makeup effects with latex for burns and the one of the mood board is the one we wish to try and recreate, it looks severe and very bloody. As a group we wanted to have gore in the trailer, and this is how we wish to do it.

9- This is a piece of religious art depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ whilst pictured inside a larger picture of Jesus Christ's head. Our group felt inspired by this art work because it helps to capture the mood of the church we'll be using to shoot our trailer within. We felt we needed to look into and include religious art and texts in order to capture the overall feel of the location.

10- This is a picture of the actual church we will be filming our trailer at, we felt we should include it on our mood board because it will be the main setting for the trailer, also a church is a typical horror location, and helps to tie in with the graveyard location well. This way we shall have a continuous ambiance throughout the trailer.

11-The picture of the mist is included in the mood board because firstly, mist is a natural horror convention, and is used to deceive and disorientate audiences. we included this because mist is also because it has an element of the unknown, and that's what we wish to capture within our trailer. We want to shock audiences with stuff they don't see coming.

12- This line from William Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' is interesting because it pays tribute to biblical terms, it mentions hell and how that devils ram the earth. this comment about people being evil is interesting as it's how we wish to base our killer character, we want him to be part demon underneath the skin of an innocent priest.

13- This is an image that is relevant to the context of the time, we now have female priests being included within the church system. We wanted to include the female priest because we are using a 'final girl' whom is a priest and it's through her purity that she tries to eradicate the father.

14- The director Tom Six has been included on our mood board because we want to push boundaries within our trailer much like the movies of Tom Six. One of our shots is a male victim being penetrated through the skull with a crucifix which is a controversial idea in itself. Our trailer wants to include some of the raw cinema elements within it that makes it difficult to watch in order to help convey the idea of horror in a big way to our audiences.

The Pusher Trilogy trailer review

Name of film- The Pusher Trilogy
Genre- Horror
Year released-2005
Your mark after viewing- 8/10

What happened in the trailer?
The trailer showed highlights from the 3 different The Pusher films, representing the various activities of the drug syndicate; including crime, body horror, drugs and sex. The trailer had intertitle reviews that link the 3 films together and establish to the audience critical acclaim that the trilogy has received.

What positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are well fulfilled?
The trailer was clever in the respect that it was able to show highlights that represent the entire trilogy all at once that’ll also attract the target audience. The trailer is quickly paced and features mostly quick paced montages to keep the audience’s attention and so that the entire trilogy can be shown in the trailer. Linking to this, the heartbeat sounding music was fast paced too to give connotations of adrenaline and tension. The editing features match on rhythm cuts where the shot cuts in time with the music to build connotations of tension and excitement for the audience. The intertitles are reviews which show the critical acclaim and praise for the film and give the audience a representation of how good these films are to build excitement. The trailer also works well as it doesn’t give too much of the narrative away and keeps some suspense and mystery for the full film.

Which aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?
The text on the intertitles was too long and only just readable for the time it was on the screen meaning that the audience member could miss some of the text and have to pause the trailer several times, ruining its pacing. Despite the fact it withholds the narrative, it doesn’t give enough of the story to understand what is actually happening and could result in confusion. The trailer, due to trying to fit 3 films in, is too fast paced and some scenes can look like a blur as you can’t see what is happening in the scene.

What was the trailers average class score? Why did it receive that mark?
The average class score was 8/10 as the trailer doesn’t hold back on the body horror, crime, drugs and sex. This means the main aspects of the film are represented well and allows the audience to understand what the films are about.

Day of the Dead trailer review

Name of the film- Day of the Dead
Year released- 1985
Film genre- Horror
Your mark after viewing- 6/10

What happened in the trailer?
The trailer showed highlights from the film as well as showing a shot from inside a cinema and having target audience members react to the trailer. The voiceover helps to progress the narrative a little and establish that humans are dying out and zombies have taken over. As the trailer progresses we see a zombie sitting in the cinema eating popcorn and people start to look at him. The trailer ends after a few more highlighted with the zombie sitting alone in the cinema and contrapuntal music, “The Gonk” by The Goblins, plays which allows audience members to link it to the rest of Romero’s “Dead” series.

What positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are fulfilled well?
The trailer showed highlights taken at different points from the film in order to show how the film would progress and address the narrative of the film. The narrative of the film is also established well in the trailer as the idea of zombies being experimented on to find a cure is expressed in the voiceover. The highlights are taken from different points of the film and therefore give it a wider representation as different aspects of the film are shown. The zombie in the cinema also had good makeup and could easily be distinguished as a zombie from the crowd of the people.

What aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?
The trailer also has a lot of features that are unsuccessful and off putting for a target audience. For example the entire scene of the cinema, whilst interesting, is annoying and unnecessary as it pulls away from the main highlights of the film by cutting between shots from the film and shots from the cinema. The trailer is also boring and monotonous as there is no form of collision cutting or fast paced montage, and only a slow paced montage is used throughout the trailer. The trailer also lacks body horror and action that should be engrossing the audience, but instead they focus solely on and drag out the description of the narrative of the film.

What was the trailer’s average score from the class? Why did it receive the mark it got?
The trailer got an average of 4.5/10 from the class due to the fact it was slowly paced with no collision cutting and featured an annoying voiceover. It also held back on the body horror and instead gave us connotations of comedy with the zombie in the cinema which contrasted with the film highlights that were being shown.

30 Days of Night trailer review

Name of film- 30 Days of Night
Genre- Horror
Year released-2009
Your mark after viewing- 8/10

What happened in the trailer?
The trailer starts when a woman is pulled out a window by a vampire and killed. More deaths follow and the intertitles address help progress the narrative by telling us that vampires are attacking an Alaskan town as night lasts 30 days there.

What positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are well fulfilled?
The trailer featured an unconventional convention where a jump scare, which usually appears at the end, appears at the beginning of the trailer to give a cunning connotation and represent that the film is surprising and unexpected. The trailer also uses collision cutting between the vampire action and slower paced monologue scenes which gives the trailer an exciting pace. The body horror was well represented in the trailer and the vampire threat isn’t too established as well meaning the audience don’t really know what the full extent of the threat is. The intertitles also don’t give too much of the narrative away but still sell the idea to the audience. The background colour, and low key lighting, for these intertitles and the trailer was a gloomy blue to represent the cold atmosphere but as the trailer progresses this intertitles background changes to red to connote that blood will be spilt.

Which aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?

The trailer did have a few flaws however, namely that no characters were introduced so the audience aren’t able to connect with the characters and learn about their role in the narrative. The trailer was also very long and could lose the attention of some members of the audience. It also featured too many editing fades where the screen dipped to black. This is annoying for the audience as it ruins the quick pacing of the trailer.

What was the trailers average class score? Why did it receive that mark?
The average class score was 8/10 due to the fact it highlighted the action horror conventions as well as showing the body horror aspects that attract the horror target audience. The trailer used intertitles very well to address the narrative and it also featured a jump scare at the beginning and end of the trailer to throw you straight into action and keep you immersed in the action the trailer has to offer.

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