RESEARCH: Analysing a Film Trailer

This is the film trailer for the new and upcoming film "As Above, So Below".  It's a horror film which is based around archaeologists in search for lost treasure in the catacombs below Paris, however they end up being at the gates of Hell.

This film trailer matches up almost perfectly to the codes and conventions of typical horror film trailers. The trailer starts off rather positive with a rather attractive woman talking and smiling before then discreetly mocking death. This is just to make everything seem "ok" before the bad stuff really starts to happen. They don't believe in demons, ghosts and ghouls etc. It is also apparent in the beginning of the trailer that it is a "hand-held camera" horror film. These are increasing in popularity because it makes the movie seem more true-to-life and more realistic!

There are many "jump scares" in the trailer. Jump scares are where the scene is intended to make you jump. By including jump scares in the movie trailer, it makes people realise how scary the film is and if it genuinely scares them, they're more likely to go and watch the movie. However, a problem I have noticed in the past is that the scary parts that are put into the trailers are usually the most scariest parts of the movies so if you happen to have seen the trailer quite a few times, you may recognise a scene from a trailer, realise something scary is about to happen and at what point and not be scared by it. This happened to me in the film "The Quiet Ones". During the trailer (which I shall link below this paragraph), all of the jump scares featured honestly did scare me whilst first watching the trailer. However, whilst watching the film, I could pick out every single one of the jump scares and there were NO other scary parts in the film, for me personally. So, this is a problem with horror film trailers for me. It's hard to make the trailer scary but not ruin the whole film.

- Trailer for The Quiet Ones

Also, throughout the trailer there is a written commentary instead of someone speaking. What I mean by this is that there is captioning talking about the history of the catacombs, who produced the film, when it's released and it also makes it personal to the audience by saying "Your past will come back to haunt you". This helps make the audience feel more scared. It's better having a written commentary for a horror film rather than having a voice over because the voice over can easily take away from the atmosphere of the film trailer.

In almost every horror film trailer I have seen, including "As Above, So Below", right before the title of the film is shown, there is always a small scene in the trailer where there is no music and something scary almost always happens. For example, in this trailer, the music cuts out and we watch a car being burned down in the catacombs with somebody inside the car. The scary part is when one of the archeologists is pulled by a strange force into the burning car. Then, straight after the title of the film is shown. This is very atmospheric as throughout the trailer, the eery music, screaming, yelling and timing of the shots is all increased and then it just suddenly cuts to this quiet scene with no screaming (at first) and absolutely no background music. It helps add tension and drama to the trailer.