Trailer - The 13th Killing

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1oFGHvd7NMo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


This is our Trailer for our A2 project, we chose the horror genre as we felt more comfortable with this chosen area. I watch a lot of horror films and the trailer for me is always the advertising feature that intrigues me. We included many genre indicators such as the use of props, the close-up angle shot of me having my throat cut immediately reveals the genre to the audience. The type of shot adds to the impact of the action and builds on the atmposhere created by the pace of shots and the music. When working with Adobe Premier Elements me and Kellie looked into what we already knew about the software so what we used in our AS projects. We then found other features that we thought would work well in a horror and tried to incorporate them into our trailer. Special effects became a part of our trailer in many ways, we darkened the light contrast on the footage to create more suspence and disconnect the audience from the actors, the 'ghosting' effect which i found effective because we used three different shots and placed them together, the effect added to the overall atmposhere making her look like she was runnning faster than what she was. We used continuity in these shots as we placed them together making sure that it looked professional for audience members.

We varied the length of the shots ranging from a slow pace at the beginning to build up the atmposhere and get the audience engaged with the trailer from the start. We then quickened the pace and made some of the shots about 2 seconds long, this was so that the audience could just about see enough of the action to know what was happenening, we felt by quickening the footage this was more relevant for the horror genre as people expect to see fast shots that reveal parts of the film. A horror trailer is best suited to fast paced shots and music, if it was slow throughout people would not be intrigued as it might say that the whole film is slow and nothing atmposheric happens. These are cliche'd conventions and we played on what the audience expect, however we also left enigma's by not revealing the killer in too much context, this was so that the audience would see something different to other horror trailers. The shots we used were to stop the audience from clearly seeing the surrounding, they were aware that it was shot outside meaning that the characters had little places to hide from the killer, this was intruing the audience into wondering where they were going to hide and how they escape if they do?

By not having many words, we left the audience with the pace of the trailer and the music, we found this effective as many horrors use these functions to build on tension and create atmosphere for the audience. However they also include more words this is where we wanted to be unique and different and went for a purely special effect and music approach. We found this more effective as it gave less away about the characters and the narrative, however the shots were effective enough to reveal some of the narrative to the audience, without making them clueless on what was going on.

Our horror trailer was suitable for our target audience as we didn't include any gore, we showed some killings and the music created the tension and atmposhere we wanted. The audience were left intrigued and wanting to know more, they said that the music corresponded with the horror genre and the shots fitted the music making it even more effective. We used teenage actors so that the audience could relate to them through there age, it made them feel more connected to the trailer and the characters.