Iconic Film Directors

History of Horror Trailers

The History of Horror Trailers

The definition of horror is 'an intense feeling of fear, shock and disgust'. These three aspects are what make a horror trailer unique from all other genres and even the first horror trailers had them. Horror is known as an ancient art from spooky stories to terrifying myths. The audience who watches these films paid to witness and feel the fear from the film and are happy to do this. The genre of horror was always present but the movies didn't really start producing until the 1930's. This is when the film industry discovered the advent of sound and went under some changes for the better on the sound front for films in general. Horror films can cause mental paralysis by entering the minds of the viewers making them feel part of the film and so they feel the effects more than some other people. The plots of horror have always been based around death, mental illnesses and super-natural occurrences. These usually include one villain in particular that is to blame for everything.


The First Horror Film

As a silent and short film "Le Manoir du Diable"  was directed by Gorges Melies from France. The entire film was 3 minutes long and was completely silent. It was a messy display of camera shots with some things that didn't make sense.

This short may have not been the best horror film ever made but it was the first of its kind revolutionising the film industry. Throughout the years other horror films were made, "Nosferatu". Up until the 1940's horror trailers were all very similar including vampires, beasts and other supernatural elements. However the director by the name of Alfred Hitchcock. This individual is the most famous individual to come out of the film industry specialisation in horror and psychological thrillers.

So How Many films did he produce in his 55 year career in the Hollywood film industry.












Alfred Hitchcock's film library set the bar for the directors that attempt horror trailer today. No matter how many horror and thriller that are produced none will be as iconic and a certain stable representation of a
thriller/horror film that Psycho directed by the man wonder himself.

Introduction to Myself

About Me

My name is Scott Pucknell and for my A2 Media coursework I have decided to do a trailer by working on my own. In the future i would like to become a film director after gaining a degree at a university in the field of Digital Film production. I have enjoyed filming and film for many years now and I have the chance to show what i can do behind a camera for my coursework. Here is a little more about me.The subjects I am studying are Media, ICT, English and Business Studies. these subjects I think will benefit me when I'm older and wanting to go in this industry. I am 17 years old and my hobbies are Skateboarding, going to concerts and filming. I dislike Pop music and i am sometimes disappointed with sequels for films. I believe that I have the necessary skills to do well when creating my trailer as I have the attitude that shows I want to learn and experiment with new things to improve my knowledge to be prepared for the industry if I get there.

Film Trailer General Research

Film Trailer Research

Why Make a Trailer

Film companies make trailers to hint to he public about what films they are going to too release soon. They usually help advertise the film, if the trailer is stunning to look at and makes the audience want to view more of it they have successfully advertised it as now that person is more than likely to go and watch that film at the cinema. This shows that this factor is a key piece of film marketing as sometimes the trailer is what people base the entire film on, therefore the trailer is the base reason for the audience to spend money to view the film in a cinema. The film trailers main function is to promote the videos to the public. If they didn’t release the trailer and just released the film people wouldn’t know about the film therefore it would have less income and profit, as people would not know what it is.  So overall the sole and main purpose of a film trailer is to create customer awareness that a certain film is coming out by stating the important bits of the film, which would help with the advertisement of the film so that when the film is released, it is watched widely, and creates a large amount of income.

Selected Clips

Normally in most circumstances the parts of the film with the most action are in the trailer to help get across the idea of the film being interesting and action packed. This signifies to the audience that this film is exciting and a ‘Must see’.  I decided to look at some trailers to see if I could spot the main actions. (DIE HARD 5) Die hard is worldwide known as an action film as it stars the actor Bruce Willis who is one of the best at what he does. This specific doesn’t just bounce straight into the action. This is because the film has achieved such a big name for itself over the years that it only has to put together a variety of shots that could indicate action. Such as the army, and the sniper on the roof of the building. The first explosion in this trailer happens at 45 seconds, this is quite a long time to wait but as soon as this first explosion has happened it sets off other action clips in the film to show the intense amount of action it has in it. The rest of the trailer is made up of fast paced actions scenes to exclaim in an exaggerated way the there is a lot of action, this is shown through, explosions, warfare, car chases, helicopters and both main characters jumping out a skyscraper window.

This is a trailer form Scary movie 5 as I am doing a horror movie so comparing this with the action trailer would benefit me in a lot of ways. The first thing I immediately see is that it is dark and still to present the aura of a super natural presence. For a horror trailer you would expect to see fast paced scenes where the main characters are trying the escape the vision of the monster. Immediately at 18 seconds we get a glimpse of the being which will be a huge part of the film, this puts the audience in their place as they now know what to expect but because  horror trailer are unpredictable they are always on edge as they do not know when it is going to show again. Similar to Die Hard a lot of the trailer is just referencing things that are super natural such as when she is being pulled by nothing, and when she is researching into the suspicious symbols in the ancient book she is reading. As this film is not just a horror film but also a comedy a lot of the trailer will be humour based which is why most of the clip involve people getting hit by doors and acting stupid. The house has obviously been possessed as people are being flung into walls and doors. This shows that to make a horror movie you should include references to the horror side but if there is also a sub genre that allows people can see how different it is from most horror films.





Genre

Films are always sorted into genres depending on what their film is about and what happens. I decided to pick to films and see if I could tell what genre is of the film just by analysing what happens during the trailer. This is the trailer from ‘Transporter 2’.  So as the trailer starts there is a 360 panoramic shot of a black Audi. The music is quiet, muted and fast paced and the actor looks at the camera and states ‘I’m Listening’, this could indicate that he is wanted or wants to find someone.  As the car does a wheel spin the sounds are amplified and the fast pacing of shots shows that it could be an Action film. The trailer then goes off-track to tell the audience a little bit of the story line.  Then a women starts shooting at the main character which tells us the genre of this film is Action. This genre was specified in 35 seconds on the trailer. To compare this time I decided to find another one.

The trailer I compared to it was ‘Stardust’.  As the first opening shots start on this trailer there are a few signs that could hint that it is a fantasy film. The sound is Angelic and sounds similar to that used in fairytales. But also it could have a sub genre, as it seems these two characters are on a date hinting that the genre could be a romance film but we are not quite sure this early in the trailer. A shooting star flies across the sky and lands, this is something that doesn’t happen of occurrence so it could be a fantasy element but we know it is a romance as the main character says things which are romantic in order to impress the girl he is with to make her happy. As he crosses the wall the effect of an invisible force field shows that it’s a fantasy film and to confirm that theory the next shot in the trailer is a girl, who was obviously the shooting star the other characters had seen. This shows that this film is a Romance/Fantasy film. This genre was specified in 30 seconds. To evaluate, these two trailers had specified which genre they were around 30 second, therefore I should attempt to do this when creating my own horror trailer.



Title

The titles are shown on different trailers in different positions. The way they are shown is different too. To create a good analysis of this I have decided to analyse 5 films and where about the titles are show in their trailer. I predict that most will show at the end of the film. Transformers 3 showed the title at the end of the film, I think that this will be the trend all films. Sucker punch also shows this at the end but unlike transformers the Date was shown after, this means that the Title is usually at the end. The man with the iron fist trailer however shows the title before the end of the film. The next shot is a humour shot though even though the film is not a comedy therefore I may have to research further into film that has clips after it shows the title. The film trailer for Turbo shows the title of this film at the start, which is a complete variation to the other films I have analysed, this does work but they also repeat the title at the end of the film. Therefore in fact it is not as different as I first thought. Finally the film trailer form Prometheus mentions the film name in the middle of the trailer but no title comes up. Prometheus shows he title also at the end of the trailer. Overall this research states that the most commonplace t display the title on a film trailer is near the end. Therefore I shall do this on my trailer, as it is the norm from my research.

Location

 Usually films have a main setting that is where everything happens, but I didn’t know if they showed much of it in the trailer so to see this I decided to watch 2 trailers from films I have seen to see if they show a lot. The first trailer is for ‘Adventure Land.’ This is about a guy working at a theme park so we expect the trailer should show parts of the theme park. The first image we get of the theme park is 31 seconds in, and then exits the park at 1.26. This is nearly 50% of the trailer is shown at the main location of the film.





The second film I decided to analyse is ‘Mean Girls’. This is mainly set at a school. Straight away after just 4 seconds we can see that they are in a school. The whole trailer is based around this one location, nearly 100%. Therefore I can choose between putting either 50 or 100 percent of my main setting into my trailer when I create it.

Sounds Narration overlaps

I wanted to note the sounds of trailers but more important the voice overlaps for characters. This is the same as a sound bridge but with dialogue instead of sound. It happens in a number of trailers such as this clip from ‘Scott Pilgrim vs The World’ (1.29). This shows that because a trailer hold brief clips of the film that if dialogue is included it may have to overlap to be included.

Editing

The editing for film trailers contains concepts of what I have described before it with other factors too. Going back to the ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the world Trailer’ we can see different cuts they have used.  At 0.14 we can see a whip pan, and the again at 0.23. 0.42 there is a slide. 0.48 the shots are so short it acts as a transition. 1.11 there is a fade into white. 1.18 zooms to fade to white cut. 1.25 fade to black. 1.44 fades to black. These are the list of transitions that were included in the trailer not including normal cuts. As you can see there are a lot of cuts used in this one trailer and there will be more in others. Transitions play a big part in trailers, as when the clips switch sometimes the music may not match it so they need to edit it so that transitions create a matching action for the music. Also if a trailer just has normal cuts it can be boring therefore transitions are used to spice it up a bit. Overall editing is a very important as it can control if people will enjoy the trailer or not so when I create my trailer I will have to think very carefully when I do the editing as applying the right transitions is key.

Fonts

The font of the trailers depends on the genre of the film, action films are usually bold and capital fonts where as in horror trailer and thrillers they are usually small, spooky and have special and unique features which are specific for their genre such as insidious. I will be able to find the font I will use on www.dafont.com as this is the best place to find and download fonts that are easy to use.

Cast and Crew

When a trailer starts to end they usually show the main cast of the film. This is because some films rely on the actors to make it better. An example of this is that Jim Carry is known as one of the funniest actors around so whenever people see his name in a film trailer they are more likely to watch it because of his reputation. Only the main characters are shown so if I do this for mine I will need to research into timings and when I should show them.

Certificate/ Audience

This is very important as there is a huge difference between U,PG,12a,12,15 and 18. Most horror and thrillers are 15 or 18 so I will have to make my film trailer aimed at this audience and certificate.