1) The document analyzes how the author's horror movie trailer uses and develops conventions of real horror movie genres and trailers. 2) The trailer follows conventions of pacing, starting slow and building tension through quick cuts and jump scares at the end. It incorporates both scenes and highlights from the film. 3) Key influences on the trailer include the works of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly his use of slow and quick montages to build suspense through collision cutting editing techniques.

1. HORROR TRAILERS
EVALUATION ANALYSIS
PART ONE
BY ALEX DALTON

2. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE,
DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?
My trailer is based upon a psychological horror and fits into this through the numerous generic
conventions I have used. Psychological horrors which have had a heavy influence on my work are
‘The Woman in Black’ and also ‘Grave Encounters’.
This shows the importance of ‘Genre Theory’ when creating a film
text, and the main critic behind this concept is Thomas Schatz. In
his book Hollywood Genres, he said that the easiest way to
analyse films was through genre, being the most dominant
element within films. This is a clear way of promoting and selling
films to an audience and giving them obvious expectations of
what to anticipate from a film. This helps filmmakers to understand their audiences and to know what
is necessary in order to appeal to them. Genre cannot be replicated exactly each time so Schatz
explained how there must be enough variety in order to keep an audiences interest however keeping
enough repetition so they are able to focus on the genre and enjoy the
content of the film. Schatz recognised that most auteurs and directors
(Wes Craven, Alfred Hitchcock, and George A Romero) “made their
most successful films through the conventional form of genre” (Thomas
Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 1981). Schatz’s theory is illustrated through
clear generic horror conventions that I found while studying ‘Psycho’
(1960), ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (1979) and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (2004). I compiled a checklist of these
generic conventions, which I then used within my horror trailer to appeal to fans of the genre.

3. CONTINUED…
My trailer largely followed the forms of both horror films and horror trailers. A significant element to
include when focusing on the horror genre is the pacing I used throughout the trailer. Pacing is a very
important when considering how you are going to capture your audience’s attention and then build to
a dramatic denouement. Like most horror trailers it starts with quite a slow beginning of a scene of
Joe and Caitie’s conflict then followed by Joe and Alex taking away Caitie’s baby as well as Caitie
committing suicide. This then speeds up as we begin to show scary highlights of the film with the
majority consisting of Caitie tormenting both Alex and Joe after her death, she does this by moving
furniture, pulling hair, dragging Joe up the stairs and making various mysterious appearances around
the family home. Once this has reached its climax the audience are then presented with a couple of
jump scares. This happens as Alex is looking in the mirror only to see a reflection of Caitie looking
back at her and then at the very end a close up of Caitie’s creepy face breathing heavily into a
camera and rolling her eye balls. This technique is often used to shock an audience and adding a
memorable ending.
The transition from a slow pace up to a quicker pace helps to build suspense, grabbing the
audience’s attention and then shocking them at the end. This is a good example of montage, a
technique which was inspired by Hitchcock which could also be seen as an elongated version of
collision cutting. This was also used well in Hitchcock’s film ‘Psycho’.

4. CONTINUED…
Two specific trailers in which I drew inspiration
from were ‘Cloverfield’ and ‘Evil Dead’.
exciting. The highlights show a group of people
arriving at an abandoned cabin inside the
woods, unleashing a curse and them being
tormented. This is shown by people hiding,
being chased through the woods, people being
possessed and being attacked. I also included
other key techniques of horror films. Restricted
narration can be seen within the trailer when
Joe finds Caitie hanging however the audience
does not see this leaving them imagining about
what has happened. This technique can be
seen to be used in the film ‘Blade Runner’.
Here the man’s eyeballs have been popped
however we do not actually see this it is only
suggested to us through the sounds we hear.
Often it is expected that a trailer would include
either a scene or – more often – highlights
from the film. We decided that it would be
beneficial for us to incorporate both of these
types in order to present our trailer in the best
way possible. The trailer for ‘Cloverfield’
consists of a scene from the film showing us a
house party being filmed by a hand held
camera and the events taking place within the
party. This enables to explain a part of the
story of the film and in turn helping to
audience in establishing what the film is going
to be about. However in the trailer for ‘Evil
Dead’ there is a consistent use of highlights
throughout and gives off a punchy impact
making the film come across as epic and
There was also
contrapuntal music
used within my trailer.
As evil and twisted
events are taking
place, a sweet lullaby is playing in the
background. This feels rather unsettling adding
to weirdness of the trailer and therefor making it

5. …
more sinister. An example of contrapuntal music in a film is in ‘Reservoir Dogs’. Quite humorous and
romantic music is playing but this has been accompanied by a rather harsh, violent scene making it
seem unnatural and uncomfortable to watch.
When I was creating our trailer it was important to consider which
auteurs had influenced the style I used. Auteur Theory was established
by Andrew Sarris who was a film critic best known for his essay Notes
on the Auteur Theory in 1962. This was an argument stating that the
most successful approach to films was through pin pointing the
directors and analysing their styles which they would bring to their films. The main auteur who
influenced me in the creation of our trailer was Alfred Hitchcock.
This was because he had a heavy influence on the early beginnings of
psychological horror and was also known as the ‘master of suspense’. This can
be seen through his films ‘North by Northwest’ where he used montage in order
to create tension and dragging it out to grab an audience’s attention. In the crop
duster scene there is a long build-up of slow montage before the attack from the
plane which gradually speeds up into a quicker montage. ‘The Birds’ also uses
montage well, in the final bird attack scene it uses
slow montage then building up into quick montage
causing panic and bombarding the viewer with images increasing
your heart rate. I tried to use techniques by him such as slow and
quick montages; and especially collision cutting. The skills which I
tried to bring to the trailer like use of lighting and types of editing were
very much influenced by the works of Alfred Hitchcock, because a
horror trailer is essentially a slow to quick montage, resulting in an
elongated example of collision cutting.