The Last Exocism

Aim: To research into how films using handle held cameras are put across to the audience in a horror genre movie.

At the beginning of the trailer, it gives a brief introduction to the type of things that the audience should expect from this film such as demons and the religious background to exorcism. It shows this almost like a documentary as the man seems to be talking directly to the audience in an informative way. The music that it begins with is quite a religious sounding one as its choir music, however, it has a disturbed tone to it.

Although the music did fit in well with the trailer and the film genre, in my opinion, I thought that the concept of ‘less is more’ probably would have fit in better. Seeing as this film is done with a hand held camera, so there would be no music in the actual movie, having little or no music may have given that impression more. These sorts of horror films are becoming more popular so this impression was probably an important one to get across.

It then breaks the normality and safety with a small scene where a teenager gives the crew a warning to leave and then throws something at the back of their car. From this point on the music and shots change dramatically to add a more ‘creepy’ feel. This is helped with glitches in some of the shots with high pitched noises, a fast knocking beat and the occasional bang as non diagetic music.

In my own trailer I plan to do something similar to this in the way that something breaks the normality as it was very effective. I will also try to use the glitching in my own piece as this gave a very creepy feeling to the trailer. I thought the ‘music’ in this part was much more appropriate as well as, although it was non diagetic music so didn’t fit into the concept of the hand held camera, It was much more subtle so added more fear but without taking attention away from the images.

It then goes back to introducing some more of the story, however, occasionally, the screen would glitch and show another shot of a red face or just have that shot tinted red. To create some sense of suspense, when showing a more horrific shot (in this case, the girl clicking her neck) the screen would go black for a couple of seconds with no music in the background and then suddenly a loud noise as well as the clicking from the neck while the screen goes back to that image to make the audience jump. I think that this fading to black and cutting to the images was the most effective thing in this trailer as it helps add a lot of suspense

From this point on, the images become more horrific, with less time in each shot as well as having black screens in between. This seemed to make the audience to concentrate more on what is being said or to anticipate the next shot. The last 20 seconds or so, the shots become even shorter, snappier with the music volume getting increasingly louder until it finished on the name of the film.

Throughout the trailer, there are credits in between some of the shots. To begin with, the lettering is white. This is while the credits are narrative. Once they begin to display producers etc or a more horrific line (he preys on the flesh of the innocent), the Writing become bigger with a more ‘in your face’ font with a red glow coming from it. I plan to have the same order in my own piece where the lettering starts of very plain to maybe give narration and then move onto more elaborate fonts.