Film trailers research

Hereditary Trailer

This movie trailer opens up with a long shot of a toy house which already sets a eerie tone then with the audio of a high pitched tune sets a certain amount of uneasy feeling to a viewer addressing the genre of the movie instantly. We are then sown a funeral scene conveying a death and a woman crying showing us that the person was loved due to a woman mourning her death. We are then introduced to the mum character giving a speech which leads to be the main voice over for the trailer, voice-overs are typically used in trailers to give the audience direct pieces of information which also showing them interesting scenes of the movie leading to the audience being invested in the narrative. The voice over also gives some exposition of what may be going on in the movie and shows the state of the characters. We are then given multiple shots till we get a jump-scare again conveying the genre of the film. This strategy allows the audience to get into the trailer and narrative by giving exposition and dialogue before scaring them to a jump-scare allowing them it feel some adrenaline and become interested in the movies narrative and nature. Also the enigma codes brought up in the trailer also provide the viewer with questions they may want answered such as what time of woman was the grandma, what is haunting them, why does the mum make wax figures, why did the son smash his head and many more. All of which the audience hopes to have answered when watching the movie. The trailer also holds a lot of consistencies such as semiotics that can be dissected for horror fans and can therefore theorise the narrative, but this does not sum up the narrative effectively. Overall the trailer uses dialogue and one liners said from the movie to explain the plot, along with visual call-outs that relates directly to the dialogue leading to a quick ad efficient way to address the narrative of the film. Unlike some trailers there is no text on screen that shows the narrative directly.

A Quite Place Trailer

This trailer introduces us with news casters talking about a event hat has occurred but he use of the screens going static shows that there is something wrong. With the story being based around being quite and not making sound we can see in the dinner sequence that the family uses sign language to communicate and from the props on the dinner table we can see that normal plates are not used but use leaves instead as plates in order to not make noise. We can also see that the characters costumes all have no shoes on which further relates to the plot of not having any sound, this justifies the lengths these people just go to ensure they do not make a lot of noise and show the audience the lengths that they have gone through to ensure their survival. The lighting of the lights turning red connotes some sort of danger of what may be happening in the movie at that point and therefore is illustrating the preparation the family has to inform each other if something is wrong. The gun prop later seen in the trailer goes against what the trailer has been telling us but may just be in a part of the movie that must strip away from the rule of no noise. The female is using a medical device to feel her stomach which connotes to audiences members that she is pregnant and is done without dialogue. 

It Follows Trailer 

This trailer revolves around a 70's theme with the music and props. But most notably evident in the trailer is a the use of long wide shots that pan within the screen making the audience check the side of the screen or i s able to build tension for a potential jump-scare or to build up audience expectations. These types of shots can also be seen to set the location of the scene to allow the audience to know where the characters are. The only time close ups are used are used is when the director wishes to convey the emotion/ fear in the characters face, this is typically useful to also show dialogue but in this trailer dialogue is mainly used in voice over. Camera movement does it have any shaky cam and has shots that follow the movement of the actors making it easy for the audience to understand what is going on. The entire trailer does not feature any sort of shaky cam therefore getting rid of fatigue audiences already have with that type of filming. There are multiple shots of the trailer where we can see a full shot of the characters that are left on screen for a long duration especially for a trailer this is possibly used to show that this movie is not a generic horror movie in the sense of varying fast short scenes with a lot of cuts but a movie with a variety of shots that all have a purpose of how they are framed. 

Don't Breathe Trailer

This trailer initially starts off with a bright day and a family establishing the motivations of the charterer to have to rob this man so that she can have a new life with her daughter, the genre is also not yet indicated in the initial shot as they movie can be a heist film so far. The trailer then introduces the aspect of the heist and the motives of the main character, the trailer so far has not fast paced editing but has long scenes that are used to establish the plot. The trailer then unveils the genre of the movie by introducing the villain of the character, the trailer then slows the pace down even more to establish the reason of why the man is the villain by showing his ability to see by hearing and how he is ruthless, the editing is therefore important to give the idea of what the characters are dealing with. From this point onward the editing begins to increase in pace showing some gory imagery alongside some footage of what the blind man is capable of. Till the near end of the trailer where a scene of the characters in real darkness to show a aspect that the audience an aspect they may not have been expecting. The trailer had a scene the directly juxtapose one another with the heist aspect of the film in the day being shown and the robbery scene at night being a horror feel to introduce the aspect that the movie is a horror movie.

Sinister Trailer

The trailer instantly begins with the noise of clips being added into a projector initially conveying to the audience that these will have a significance in the movie. The voice over of a news cast alongside the images of the murder taking place instantly allows the audience to correlate the images with the audio of what is being shown to them. The voice over then allows the audience to know what the plot is and what the state of the characters are as they wish to stay at the old home but due to money have had to move but also that the main characters intention of living there is to write a story therefore showing that his character is a writer as well. All the diagetic audio in the viewing scene allows the viewer and lastly the voice over is used to get the villains abilities and intentions across as his objectives are told by the researcher. The trailer then follows with more scenes of the main character watching scenes of the killings with music that causes a sense of unease and suspense. The trailer then follows to the villain of the movie with it's symbol but also screams are heard to show the horror aspect but also to scare the audience. We can also hear a lot of diegetic sounds that scare the audiences more to match the fear of the actors.

Unfriended Trailer  

The trailer already starts of with some intertextuality of the trailer being played by the movie as we see the universal pictures logo, we are then shown that the movie is all shown through a computer scene where we hear all the real apple message notifications and we hear all the real sounds of Skype, but the trailer still consists of non diagetic sound. This trailer has a whole different type of how it was filmed with a new idea of how horror can be filmed. With all of it being from one screen. The film has a lot of new conventions that not a lot of horror movies have, but still has a few conventions such as jump scares and gory deaths that a lot of people see as gimmicks. The review quotes also have quotes from people that seem to be websites that may be viewed in the trailer. The social media of the film is also based on Facebook which from the trailer can be seen to be used in the trailer of the movie so therefore it may have been used as a social media campaign especially with the concept of the film being on a laptop. All the graphics seen in the trailer are all real logos and sounds that are in the applications being used by the characters.