Analysis of trailers

As I was trying to think of more ideas I decided to look at three trailers specific to my trailer genre of horror. Write an overview of the genre trailer you have studied and are most likely going to pick as your own.

I have studied and analysed three trailers from the horror genre. The three trailers are: Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) and The Last Exorcism (2010). Although these three films are from the horror genre, there is a difference between them. Nightmare on Elm Street makes you think about the murders and how Freddy Krueger can get into all of their dreams/minds. This trailer didn't frighten me but it made it think about the storyline and what could've possibly happened. Paranormal Activity 2 was different because the trailer is there to make you jump and make you frightenend. The Last Exorcism didn't frighten me as such but the clips in it did make me feel physically sick.

The trailer for Nightmare on Elm Street had many interesting features, of which the best were the camera angles, the editing and the music. At the beginning of the trailer it shows us young Freddy Krueger running away from the town's people who are chasing him in cars. A slow motion close up was used when Freddy Krueger was running away and as he turned around to see where they were. This was to emphasis the fear in Krueger's expression or, in fact, the look of guilt. The rest of the trailer follows the conventions of a horror trailer; fast, short clips and the music building up to a climax. Probably the most shocking thing in this trailer that actually scared me was after the opening scene, when Krueger started appearing in people's dreams a little girl's voice became the voice over and she started saying a rhyme about Krueger. It started with, "One two Freddy's coming for you". The children's voices come back at the very end just before the credits, the children start laughing. This makes the trailer seem a bit more manic and disturbing because younger children are involved and that, to me, is terrifying.

The trailer for Paranormal Activity 2 is very different to the previous trailer because this trailer is more to do with making the audience jump and it is less about camera angles and positioning. There are a lot of hard cuts, done so to make you jump e.g. there is a scene where a dog is barking at a door, the camera cuts to a clip of an audience and then back to the door where now a teenage girl is stood there. It looked as if the film was being recorded from CCTV camera around the house. This is not the conventional way to record a horror film but is becoming more popular thing to do: The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and The Fourth Kind all being documentary style horror films. I think doing a horror film as a documentary will add to the fear element and make it a more terrifying film.

The last trailer is The Last Exorcism and I believe this is the most terrifying of the three. The main reason for this is because it is filmed as a documentary which makes the experience watching it feel even more real, making the audience feel like it actually happened rather than having a script and a proper film crew. The other main reason that makes this trailer so frightening is the red coloured overlay that has been used in the last few scenes of the trailer. This red overlay really gives the audience a sense that the girl is evil and is being posest by the devil.