Influences and Styles

There are numerous effects and styles from horror movie trailers that are extremely good and will therefore help me construct a good looking horror trailer.

The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black was originally a novel and was transferred to film format because of it's extreme popularity. It follows the story of Arthur Kipps who is made to sort out a dead woman's affairs.

The trailer itself uses jumpscares but very effectively so to cause tension not to outright scare the viewer, something I wish to use in my own trailer.

One interesting piece of iconography used is toys, mainly toys that play musical instruments and have some kind of visually disernable face. These faces often cause the toys to look disturbing. Distrubing toys are also an important part of horror iconography and so I could use these to my advantage when coming up with te story of the trailer and also deciding how to film them, as they are all filmed with the toys in generally off-putting ways

Sinister

Sinister is one of the more modern horror movies and follows the story of a true-crime novelist who begins to find out the reason as to why a family died in his new house.

The trailer begins with plenty of shots that explain why the character is here and who the family is. One particular shot I like is a long shot of him pushing the top of an attic open and having the light from downstairs illuminate a large dark room. It is a very striking shot and while I don't want to replicate it exactly it would be a nice shot to work with, considering the interesting light.

One other thing I do like about this trailer are the titles and the background they are placed on. The background looks like a wall with cracked paint on it. The white colour of the wall contrasts with the black serif lettering. The serif font actually works in the films favour as it makes it seem professional and it's something I notice with many of the horror trailers.

Alien

Alien is possibly the best crossover of the Sci-Fi genre with the horror genre. The story follows the acts of a crew as they desperately try to run and save themselves from an alien Xenomorph, essentially the ultimate predator.

The trailer is very effective as it has no real jumpscares in it, just a collection of shots that build tension, which all function extremely well together. This lack of reliance on jumpscares is something that I want to include in a trailer that I would make as jumpscares are seen as a cheap way to ellicit an emotional response from someone.

The trailer also has a very good chronology to it. The trailer starts with the shots of the egg followed by several shots of people running down hallways interlinked with shots of a research team exploring a spacecraft. The shots also become more and more disturbing towards the end with people having violent spasms, something that causes tension. This kind of chronology would be a nice thing to include in my own as it would give the trailer a sense of progression

Insidious

Insidious is a very popular horror movie of the modern day and has some very interesting concepts that are shown in the film. The idea of a demon invading our world via the body of a boy.

The trailer has a constant ticking noise heard in the background, from a metronome. It starts with a visual cue from a metronome on screen that begins to tick and the sound is heard constantly throughout the trailer. This causes suspense throughout the trailer and would be an interesting idea to include in my own.

The trailer ends with a classic horror movie jumpscare desgined to make use of all of the tension built up in the trailer so far. This is seen in several horror trailers especially at the end of the trailer where the viewer believes the trailer has ended but instead for a few frames they are subjected to intense sound and a visual cue that appears close to the screen, so it is close to the viewers face, inciting a terrified reaction. While I am generally against jumpscares this idea of one at the end of a trailer is common place and so would be an idea to consider.