Evaluation-PART ONE-

Evaluation PT. 1

My horror trailer titled ‘The Possessed’ fits the genre of horror and mystery. We knew that recreating generic conventions was very important in creating a successful trailer. The critic behind genre theory was a man called Thomas Schatz, and in his book Hollywood Genres (1981) he believes genre theory is the most important theory in film. The importance of genre theory is by understanding and creating media texts by seeing this in trailers, and how they “flog” the genre to us as the audience. You must give the (horror) genre fans what they want, which are “generic expectations”. Schatz explains how the film must be similar to films of the same genre, and with our horror trailer The Possessed we first researched by watching other similar horror films what we wanted to get inspiration from. The Blair Witch Project (1999) was a film we all liked and became a big inspiration.

However, we also knew the film/trailer must be slightly different enough to be interesting plus the trailer won’t go against the expectations created by the advertising. The auteur influences I put into my trailer was definitely the detailed use of horror cinematography, as I like how horror surprises and confronts you with weird shots. All of them are ‘expressionist,’ because through expressionism you use camera angles to create emotion effects. The Possessed is a handheld film and this really makes the suspense and the shocking moments seem real in the trailer. Other powerful cinematographic techniques were our use of close-ups, point of views shots and skewed angles. This first appears at the start of the trailer with the scene in the car with the five students are driving to the woods (creepy location) with the handheld camera in the back seat focusing on the outside and where they are with skewed shots. Secondly horror cinematography of expressionist shots and angles shows when the person holding the camera is running through the woods and the camera is moving around creating excitement and intense moments.

Editing and sound playing had a huge part in the trailer with natural sound and movement through out to seem realistic and true. Plus by editing, sticking the shots together montage, it creates emotion and that is the way The Possessed is distinctive. For example the ending of the trailer we go from the slow build up down the stairs to the sudden jump as the possessed character (me) leaps towards the camera, this compares to Hitchcock’s use of the same type of collision cutting from Psycho (1960) when Lila discovers Norman’s mother in the basement. It's a big contrast from a slow suspense filled scene to a jumpy scary one.