General Research

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A trailer is created to give viewers a preview of an upcoming film. It consists of a short montage of film clips and sometimes camera stills to sell the film to it's audience. A typical trailer is normally made up of clips of the best scenes in the film, but they also have to have a sense of continuity to give the basic storyline. Trailers usually also feature the names of key people who helped create the film, for example the writer/producer/directer. They sometimes show film critic's reviews also to act as a persuasive feature in appealing to the audience.

A trailer would typically be seen in the cinema before a film begins, as an advertisement on TV or on the internet. Different formats affect the viewing of the trailer through size, quality and what is happening around the viewer. For example an advert on the TV may simply be ignored, or if the trailer appears as a pop-up on the internet it is more than likely to be just closed down.

Genre conventions are unrealistic ways and forms that are accepted by the audience as normal and logical in the film. For example, demons and devilish creatures we know don't exist, but we accept this when watching a film with these as characters for our viewing pleasure. Typical conventions of a horror are an extraordinary situation, a death or murder, vulnerable targets, often an unsuccessful act of heroism, a gothic edge, blood and violence. Others include deserted locations and unexplained noises.

A teaser trailer is much shorter than a full trailer. It provides sparse information about the film and uses very small amounts of actual footage from the film. They are usually made before production is complete and is generally released around 6-8 months before the film's release. A trailer on the other hand creates an outline of the story, using mostly footage from the film and provides the audience with more information than a teaser trailer. They are released around 2 months prior to the release date and are usually created after production is complete.

A successful horror trailer will make the viewer feel suspense, tension and fear. For example, a typical horror film will build up tension usually using a combination of dense music and close ups of the character. Then something happens. It isn't necessarily scary, but due to the amount of tension built it makes the audience jump as this wasn't what they were expecting. This element is needed in a trailer to make it successful without giving too much of the storyline away, but also without publicising every scary aspect of the film to build the audience's hopes and expectations.