Trailer Research - Horror Film Trailers

After watching all of the horror film trailers nominated for the golden trailer awards, I noticed certain expected codes and conventions that were similar within all of them at some point. In my opinion the trailer for Mama produced by Guillermo Del Toro was the best of this category, closely followed by Sinister. The three main components that I think bring this trailer together ans effectively build suspense is the music/sound, low key lighting  paired with a blue filter and the editing. The music plays a big role in captivating the audience watching the trailer as amongst the deep bass and almost heartbeat like drumming music is paired with sharp high pitched sounds and the echoes and whispering of the children all coagulate together to create a really eerie feel right throughout. There are also short frames of silence which also help to build the suspense. The graphics and text in between the clips is non-stereotypical white, where for a lot of horror films it would be red to connote danger, however, in Mama very effective background is used behind the text that is almost ink like, and denotes the look of blood and veins which is perfectly suited for the horror genre to fit with the dark theme. The trailer heavily consists of fast paced jump cuts through the scenes to build suspense, paired with really slow moving scenes with high pitched building sound to create a suspenseful atmosphere/theme. Also throughout the whole trailer I noted that as you would expect of a horror film, the lighting is very low key for the majority of the trailer with effective use of darkness, but also that there was a blue filter for a lot of the scenes creating a cold, uneasy feeling.

From watching all of these trailers I have picked up on a few key components that I will consider using when creating my own trailer, if it was of the horror genre. The main aspect for me to make sure I include is an interesting use of cinematography such as quite a lot of close ups and shallow focus shots to really show the characters expression which I think is a key component for a horror film. This was seen in the trailer for Graceland, where the opening frame/shot was a shallow focus close up of the driver of a car and you could really see the detail of facial expression in displaying his emotions which is effective for this genre. Also I really like the use of lighting to show a scene and I think that is it a key feature that a lot of people forget about when watching a film, and without it, the film would not carry the same theme or atmosphere that it intended to. I really like the low key, blue filtered lighting of the Mama trailer and also in Sinister where the light in some scenes the only light source was from a torch or projector for example to build suspense and focus the scene on one object, and I think that this is a good way of creating suspense. Finally within this genre the structure of the trailers seem to be non-existent and sporadic to create intensity of little snippets of shocking scenes to captivate the audience and entice them to see the film.