Film Trailer: Strangers

• This is my favourite horror film trailer and I am going to use inspiration from this video in my own work. I think this trailer is very successful and captures the mood perfectly. It gives an idea to what the film is about but at the same time doesn’t give away too much.
• The trailer creates suspense with the use of effective music. The spooky slow piano tune at the beginning instantly gets the audience on the edge of their seat waiting for something to happen. The mellow atmosphere of the couple having a romantic meal is sharply interrupted with a loud bang on the door and this shocks the audience grabbing their attention. I think music is the key element in any horror film/trailer and the slow swinging of a rusty old swing is used often in the horror genre, and is used affectively in this trailer as it creates an unsettled atmosphere where the audience don’t know who or what is after the characters.
•  I like the part when the music goes off and you just see a masked man appear behind the woman, this makes the audience want to shout out to the woman to warn her, the audience are engaged and paying full attention. The trailer then picks up pace going into more upbeat, loud music and faster transitions of shots. This picks up suspense and as the music goes off and a loud bang happens as an axe gets hit through the door, this causes the audience to jump as it was unexpected.
• This trailer also has a successful ending.It ends with the woman asking “why us?” and the voice of a masked person repeating the films slogan in reply “Because you were home”. This leaves the trailer with an eerie atmosphere and the audience wanting to find out more!

Genre: Horror

I have chosen the genre of Horror for my film teaser trailer. I decided to choose this genre because horror films are one of my favourite films to watch as I like the suspense they create and how they keep you engaged and on the edge of your seat the whole way through. You constantly have something new to focus on so I wanted to see if I could achieve something of a genre that I enjoy to watch myself.  

“Horror films are unsettling movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers.”

 In my opinion there are two main types of Horror films. Some horror films include blood, gore and violence and others take more of a psychological approach and rely more on the aspect of suspense to keep the audience shocked and at the edge of their seat. I am going to focus on horror films that use the psychological approach and get inside the views head.

Conventions
Horror films often deal with the viewer's nightmares, hidden worst fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. They usually include scenes which startle the viewer and repeatedly involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or person, commonly of supernatural origin entering into the everyday world. Themes regularly interpreted into horror films include ghosts, masked people, werewolves, zombies, serial killers, haunted houses, demons, vampires and curses.

The genre of Horror is so broad I am looking forward to interpreting horror in my own way and producing a convincing teaser trailer which leaves the audience with chills.