Our trailer followed the conventions of J-Horror and we therefore looked at a variety of J-horror films such as The Ring and The Grudge, which are the most popular and well known to a western audience. A teaser trailer is different from a trailer in that it only gives the audience a small amount of information on the film and therefore entices them to watch the full trailer and the film when it comes out. The usual span of a teaser trailer is between 20 seconds to a minute. I noticed that in The ring and The Grudge there were a lot of flashes or ‘strobe’ editing to connote a sense of panic or disarray. I therefore tried to incorporate this into my trailer.
During the lead up to creating the trailer the group all wrote a textual analysis on a horror film of their choice. I did mine on the Haunting in Connecticut and particularly liked that they used text to help explain the trailer more effectively. I did this also in a similar style. It is important to help the audience relate to the genre and idea of your trailer, therefore following the conventions of horror trailers already out there was the most effective way.
Another very popular or well known convention in horror trailers is the use of little girls, who have by now created a sense of creepiness in horror films. The majority are young, pale, with long black hair this applies in The Ring, The Grudge and Silent Hill. This idea originally came from the Japanese who have always believed in demons called ‘Onryo and Yurei’ who are tied to the physical world due to strong emotions and follow the conventions of having long black hair and wear long white dresses. However it is not only the western versions of Japanese films that have little girls in them, The Shining for instance include two girl twins, and The Omen has a young boy.
Like most horror films and their trailers the mise en scene is generally the same, the lighting is quite low key connoting a dark presence. Our trailer was based in modern day and therefore the costume is that of what modern day students would wear, mainly Swarica, who was our main actress who wore what she normally wore to college. Our only props included a book that Swarica picked from the book shelf in the library, and a dress that we borrowed from another group because we could not find a suitable one at the time. The setting was in and around the college grounds which is typical of ‘high school horrors’ in America. The countless numbers of rooms and doors and the huge building itself creates a sense of being in a maze, a good example of this would be in Silent Hill where the antagonist is running around an abandoned school absolutely clueless as to where to go. Knowing that she does not know where she is going makes us as the audience panic with her, especially as she is by herself and is being chased.
The sound in our trailer was created by a friend who is studying Music Technology, Jacob Manlises, he created the sound track with guidance from me. I specifically wanted an eerie start with a quick panicky end as at the end of the trailer I did some strobe editing, the end is then slow and eerie again as you see a door close. I used The Haunting in Connecticut trailer as a lot of the inspiration in our trailer as at the end of it the words ‘THIS SPRINGTHE FEAR IS REAL’ in our it is ‘THIS SUMMER DON’T BE THE LAST ONE OUT’ I used the title of the film at the end.
Although we followed a lot of conventions, others we broke. Typically the lead female is Caucasian however we used a black female for practicality and because she wanted to be the lead. But we did use me as the ghost, an oriental female with long black hair.
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