Rationale

To make the sound in our trailer as professional and as creepy as possible we had to do some research into existing products. We looked at what different elements of sound were used in a horror trailer. We found several different aspects:

• Dialogue
• Music (main and underlying)
• Special Effects

Findings

Dialogue - In most horror trailers, we found that dialogue was kept to a minimum and, in some cases there was no dialogue at all. However, we focused largely on 'The Cabin in the Woods' as it has a similar theme to the trailer as our film does. Cabin in the Woods uses very little dialogue as a whole - the majority of the dialogue comes at the beginning of the trailer. This is something we're going to try and utilise as the microphones we have may be difficult to pick up quality sound. The Cabin in the Woods trailer uses small snippets of dialogue toward the end such as "we need to stick together". Again we're going to try and use this technique as little and quick dialogue can keep pace for our product.

Music - Throughout our study of music in a horror trailer we found that there's two main pieces - the beginning and the underlying. Again we looked at Cabin in the Woods, which showed an upbeat even happy song at the start; this music complimented the mood of the piece. However, as the scenes changed to a more creepy sense of style so did the music. Quiet, underlying and even harmonic tones created a sense of horror and even innocence. This is again a technique we'd like to exploit. Our piece involves a lot of loud bangs and scenes that try and surprise the viewer - the underlying tones add to this aim.

Special Effects -  All horror trailers use a lot of special effects from bangs to scratching to added dialogue. We tried to use all these effects. We've added sounds that escalate in noise quickly and produce a dramatic climax which will potentially heighten the impact of the following shots and scenes. Along with this we're planning on placing a heartbeat sound to compliment a certain run of shots with a character in a cellar. Our final use of sound comes through the added dialogue of a child's voice over the top of our film. Below is some of the audio clips we have used.

This video is a montage of the audio clips recorded to feature in our trailer. The recordings are of a young child, counting to 10 and singing a nursery rhymes. Throughout our research we found that audiences found young children featuring in horror films extremely creepy especially their young voices, therefore we decided to incorporate this into our trailer. 

C&B