Evaluation 2: How does your use of sound compare with trailers of similar genres?

Within our media productions, our trailer's genre of horror set out a difficult task of the correct use of soundtrack and sound effects throughout the production. Although our group initially thought that finding creepy, non-copyrighted music would be easy, we found that none of what we were finding suited our type of horror trailer that we were presenting visually, slasher.


Though we eventually did find the correct eerie and creepy soundtrack to last throughout the majority of the trailer, towards the end of the trailer we closed off with a carnival theme tune, as to conform to our antagonists character, a clown. Within the film industry, many methods are taken into consideration throughout an entire film, such as the "folley process", which covers over sound that isn't as emphasised within the physical scene, We didn't use this method within our production as we didn't use dialogue throughout the trailer, in order to conform to Barthe's enigma codes theory, where our group wanted to use suspense and mystery throughout the production,, leaving little known about the films plot, as to show an aspect of unpredictability.


Sound effects wise within our film, we initially started with a "boom" sound effect, this was an aspect our group wanted to involve within the beginning of our trailer, as we wanted to attract our audiences attention straight away, so this loud and abrupt sound effect would cause a jump effect and therefore thrill them into continuing to watch. We visually paired this effect with an establishing shot of our protagonists house, immediately showing the audience that this will be an unnerving setting within the production, due to the sound effect placed over the top of this shot. We then suggest to our audience that the film isn't being set in modern day, du to the continuous shots a spinning record player, which is projecting jazz music over the top of our creepy main soundtrack, therefore creating a building of tension across the scene and also showing that due to the use of a record player this may be set in an earlier time, the genre of jazz itself would also be seen as an elitist type of music, therefore also casting a profile onto the owners of the house, to be from a more middle and upper class background, this is much alike the horror film Ouija 2, which we took inspiration from in our film when it came to the record player.


 Within our visual appearance of the clown we often presented on sight of the clown a diegetic harsh chiming sound, this was to create a dark and creepy appearance and character over the his personality. Showing the audience the clowns cruel intentions over our protagonists. We felt as though involving this would show the antagonist effectively. We took influence from Stephan King's IT, when it came to not involving dialogue, as we wanted to show our horror visually, and through our sound, without revealing too much about our plot. We ended our trailer with carnival music, hearing a young girls voice over the song saying "follow me", paying on the stereotype within horror films, that children are creepy such as the poltergeist and insidious. We wanted to create the possibility that this was a trap for our protagonists and ultimately our audience to follow the child's voice and go and see the film.