Trailer Conventions Analysis

One convention of a film trailer is to have the title of the film appear at the end of the trailer. This is done to make the title a focal point of the trailer, as if it is the last thing the audience sees it is likely to be the thing they best remember. Making the title a focal point for the audience is very important as if they don't know what the film is called it is less likely they are going to find and see it because they won't recognise it by name. We conformed to this convention in our trailer for the same reason, as we want the name stalker to stick in the audiences memory. I think this is even more important for a film such as ours as the title tells the audience a key part of the film, that the antagonist is a stalker. Without drawing attention to our title the audience may misinterpret the character to be a typical murderer as there is no other reference to stalking in our trailer apart from the title. We want the audience to know our antagonist is a stalker as it gives a bit more detail to the characters motives and makes him a bit more 3-dimensional, as if they do not know anything about his motives as well as not knowing who he is or what he looks like they may not be interested in the most important character in our film, and therefore the film itself. The titles we have created are also important at highlighting the tone of the film, as our title is linked with darkness, thunder and lightning which we think leaves the audience with a foreshadowing of what happens in the film and carries significant symbolism along with it.

Trailers often give the audience more information through voice overs and titles throughout the trailer that help to paint a better picture of the film that may be hard to represent through showcasing certain scenes. The typical example of a voice over would be Don LaFontaines work on nearly every action movie trailer ever including Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Rambo. We opted not to use a voice over in our trailer due to it being a horror, as we felt the inclusion of a voice over would remove the audience from the suspenseful atmosphere we were trying to create. A voice over isn't part of the film and instead is made in post-production and therefore serves as a reminder that what the audience is watching isn't real, making it harder to have them fully invest in the characters. On the other hand we did decide to use a title card towards the beginning of the trailer that says "based on a true story." This is a statement most horror films like to make whether true or not, as it makes the audience want to see the film more if they think that all the crazy events depicted on screen happened in real life. Whilst not part of the film, this title card works to draw people in to the world the film is creating as it gives it an edge of realism, as opposed to reminding the audience that it is only a film designed to entertain.

Another commonly used aspect of a trailer is the montage, where a series of shots are shown in quick succession in order to highlight some of the key moments in the film without giving too much away. This also has the side-effect of raising the tempo of the trailer and making it seem more dramatic as it builds to its climax at the end. We chose to subvert this convention for our trailer as we feel that ending the trailer on a high tempo with a big climax is better suited to an action film that is working to get its audience pumped up in anticipation of seeing the film. We felt it was more important to have our trailer create a low tempo with high tension to match the genre. Suspense is created from longer shots as it gives the audience time to digest exactly what is happening onscreen and anticipate what is going to happen next, allowing for a bigger 'jump-scare' so we chose to match this slower pace in our trailer. Our trailer has a clear 3 act structure taken from 3 key scenes of our film, not giving too much away to our audience in order for clear enigmas to be left hanging that encourage the audience to see the film.

The most influential inspiration in the making of our trailer would have been director James Wan. He is known for his work on a lot of modern horror films including Saw, Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2 and The Conjuring. Insidious is particularly well directed in its use of long, lingering shots that hold the audience on the edge of their seats and we sought to recreate the same technique in shooting our trailer. All of the James Wan films mentioned above also share something in common in terms of location, with them all being predominantly set inside a single room or house. This gives off the idea of being in a confined space, away from civilisation and trapped with the antagonist. We chose to employ this method with our trailer as well with most of the film taking place inside the protagonists house.