Deconstruction of horror film trailer 2

Insidious 4 trailer
I have chosen to deconstruct this film trailer as it also the same sub genre as my film trailer and will help me understand the things necessary to attract the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xwMetjJVsE

The main thing that stands out to me straight away is that the antagonist is shown straight away, this goes against the forms and conventions and usually there is a build up to see the monster in these type of films. This is good because it attracts and scares the audience straight away which is a main aim of horror film trailers. Another thing that I like is the constant use of black outs and black fades, this is good because instead of using straight cuts the black fade has more impact as it masks the action and creates suspense as there is a slight delay in what is going to happen next.

There is a lot of good camera angles and movements used in this trailer. One of these being high angle on the girl when the monster is on top of her, this shows that she is inferior and petrified of the monster. There is a lot of point of view shots which creates tension and suspense, this is good as it is more realistic and worrying for the audience as they feel that they are involved in the film and almost become the character, with this there is the use of only natural flash light which adds to the suspense as it is hard to see what is happening, this is definitely something that I could use for my trailer. Another good camera angle is there is a constant use of mid shot on the girl, but the audience is unaware of what she is seeing but you can tell it is very distressing by her facial expressions, this is good because it is also very worrying when you do not know what is actually happening, and this could be done so that you do not really know what is happening until you watch the film as this will be revealed when it is in full length.

The use of sound is very effective in this trailer, the thumping non-diagetic sound of music creates tension and suspense. Another key thing that I admire as I have seen these films myself, is the use of the same creepy song from the previous films, this is a very good technique because it creates a relationship between the films and the audience as they become familiar with it. Another good thing they do is increase the volume of the diagetic sound to make it sound worse as it is intensified, an example of this is when the key is going into the girls neck the noise of it going in is increased to scare the audience and make it more disturbing. The constant swap of loud noise to complete silence is very effective as the eerie silence creates the tension and suspense, this then goes onto the quick, loud sound which is used as a jump scare, this constant swap is very powerful as it clearly creates suspense and scares the audience which is the aim of horror film trailers.

The editing follows the forms and conventions as they have added the information like the producer's name in bold white writing on a plain black background with ghostly non-diagetic sound added, something I have noticed is that they have added a scary theme to literally everything involved even if it isn't actually scary. Although there is still a lot of quick snappy jump cuts the overall pace is quite a bit slower than Paranormal Activity 2 trailer, I believe this is because there is more a story to Insidious in comparison and if the pace is too quick then the narrative could be hard to understand, especially as they are not using a voice over.

In conclusion, this is a good film trailer as it both follows and goes against the forms and conventions of film trailers, which I feel is a necessity so that it isn't too predictable but without not making sense to the audience and not appealing to the target audience. It is also very good as it establishes a setting well, something that I feel the first deconstruction I done didn't and it is good to see understand the good and bad things of each in order to try and better it in my work.