Conventions of a film trailer

Rationale
To gain an understanding of what makes a horror trailer a 'horror trailer' we had to undertake some textual analysis. We needed to look at a variety of successful film trailers such as, Cabin in the Woods, Insidious and The Devil Inside. We need to do this to find out the key aspects of this genre and then we can choose whether to include or manipulate these techniques.

Findings
A film trailer is a preview of a new upcoming film that will feature in cinemas or be out on DVD shortly. They usually include key moments from the film that are not in chronological order and do not give any crucial details of the film away however leave the audience intrigued and wanting to see more. 

Using the internet we enitially watched exitsting film trailers to discover key conventions of trailers which we could therefore use when creating our own.

Key conventions of trailers... 

• Montage (a series of shots edited together from different points of the film) - This is used to highlight the most humorous  dramatic and fast-paced parts of the film to make it appeal to its chosen audience.
• Voice Overs - Most trailers use these to help the audience understand the narrative and to help portray the story in a limited time. Some trailers use the main character for the voice over to help the audience connect with the character and understand how there feeling, this can help to distinguish what type of film it is. 
• Music - Music is used throughout all film trailers to connect with the audience, enhance a scene and help to convey the films genre. Each genre has a different type of music e.g. action movies have fast-paced, loud music to create excitement and suspense.
• Tag lines - These are used to convey the film plot line and enhance the voice over. They are useful in trailers as they convey the message of the film strongly to the audience and entice them to watch it more. 
• Use of actors names - The use of the actors names are used purely to entice the audience to want to see the movie and can attract people outside their target genre market to come and see the film as they may like the actors in it. 
• Name of the film - The films name is featured to obviously let the audience know it however can be used to help recognise the name. Names are usually short and memorable and feature in a specific font relevant to the film, this way audiences find it either to recognise it. 

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