Paranomal Activity

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

This trailer takes a completely different take on engaging the audience into the film by actually filming an audience watching it and then showing their reactions in the trailer rather than just the shots from the film itself. It starts the trailer off with the line of people waiting to go in with the credits explaining what they will see in the trailer. It then moves onto showing them in the theatre. The camera’s are placed at the back and the sides so we can either see close ups of the reactions or over their heads to see some shots of the film itself. Although this seems to be quite a good method to engage the audience with, it would be very difficult to do this for my own as the reactions may seem fake.


The sounds in the trailer are either the screams from the audience, the footage itself (all containing diagetic sounds only) with a loud banging for non diagetic sound each time something makes the audience jump or when cutting between shots. Another sound that seems to be constant throughout, although changes in volume, is a sound that seems to resemble wind going through a long tunnel. This adds a bit more creepiness to it. This is the kind of music and sound (excluding those from the audience) that I want in my own piece as the only non diagetic sounds in there are very subtle and doesn’t take away the impression of the hand held camera. The chosen music for this piece is also very effective as it does add a very disturbing tone.

The pace seems to be similar than the trailer for the Last Exorcism in the sense that it slowly gets more intense as it goes on. It starts with an introduction to the audience and the contents of the film moving onto the horrific parts of Paranormal Activity and finally several short cut shots of the audience’s reactions. I will be using this in my piece as having the intensity and horror progressively getting stronger certainly added excitement. Another thing that is similar to the trailer for the last exorcism is the glitching of the screen that occasionally happens throughout to add to that hand held camera affect of the film.

The credits that appear through the film begin with simple white typewriter lettering explaining that the audience is one of the first to watch the film. The same sort of lettering is then used to present some reviews given about the movie, for example, ‘genuinely horrifying – Film Threat’. Finally, as the film begins to get a bit more intense, the font changes to a bolder, brighter font which is glowing, saying ‘experience it for yourself’. The final lettering that shows up on the screen is the name ‘Paranormal Activity’ which stays for a few seconds, glitching slightly before it goes.

I didn’t think that that the reviews being shown on the screen made this trailer any more effective. I thought that the audiences opinions (based on their reactions) would probably be more reliable to those watching the trailer. However, again, I thought that the fonts used for the introduction and then the different font for the line given was very effective so I shall think about using this method in my own trailer.