Genre by Lucas Ryan

I am going to focus on my teaser trailer that i created as part of a marketing

campaign for my film ‘Where Ever You Are’ The purpose of the teaser trailer is

to entice and interest existing and potential consumers. It is meant to give

a hint and a small sneak peak at the film and show a potential plotline. It will

usually set the genre and will give relevant information like the release

date and what the film is called, often it will show who is in the film as well. In

short the point of the teaser trailer is to get people interested in the film.

Genre?Genre is important to both distributors and the audience when it comes to teaser trailer. A distributor could easily alienate their target audience if they don’t explicitly show the intended genre for a film. For example if the makers of a new horror film created their teaser trailer that gave off a ‘Rom-Com’ genre then they will have targeted the wrong people and lost their audience.

Genre is also especially important when making the film as it is. The horror genre has many codes and conventions such as death and blood. Having these concrete conventions allows film makers and distributors to easily create their film and make sure it fits into the genre because there are so many well known conventions. Everyone knows that ‘a haunted house’ or ‘a knife wielding stalker’ are horror film symbols. Just how a wizard or a dragon are conventional of fantasy films.

Genre also easily allows the audience to know whether they will like to go to see that film. A fan of a fantasy film like harry potter would expect to see dragons and wizards

not knife wielding maniacs or torture devices like you would in a horror.

If i saw a ghost film i would most likely go see it because i enjoy paranormal films but i

would only know that from the trailer, if it has a creaking door or something moving on its own then i will know what film it is.

Neale (1980) states that 'genres are instances of repetition and difference'

This to me means that within a genre there are certain codes and conventions that will appear in most films belonging to that genre, as i said on the previous slide. But i also think it means that a film has to have something different in it to make it unique or interesting. Take ‘Insidious’ for example it seems like a common ghost film, the family moves to a new home and start experiencing paranormal activity. But instead of the house being possessed its their son, which opens up a whole new narrative making it new and interesting for the audience because they won’t have seen that before.

In my teaser trailer there are many traditional codes and conventions of horror films such as the bloody knife and the hooded staler but we also include more unique selling points such as the young age of the cast and that they’re British. Despite trying to portray this as a Hollywood film we wanted to keep the cast English to contrast with the many repetitive American slasher films

Lacey's 'Repertoire of Elements : Setting 

The woods is the setting of our horror films, it represents isolation and being lost. Just like many slasher films the

characters are isolated from civilisation either in the forest, at a lake or in a house. We chose the woods because it’s easy to get separated in the woods, there are many places to hide and you

never know quite how far you have gone. It needs to be a location where the characters will not be able to find help

easily, and help won’t be able to find them easily.

Lacey's 'Repertoire of Elements : Character 

The characters we chose also fit with most horror films. The antagonist is traditionally a male which will represent power and dominance. Whereas his victim(s) will be younger people mainly female. Both of which traditionally are viewed as less powerful

and weaker. Our lead character is a female but she isn’t a strong and independent female instead she ends up needing

help and gets captured

Lacey's 'Repertoire of Elements : Narrative 

The narrative is one that is often repeated in horror films, whilst some may call it cliché it’s proven to work and already has a dedicated fanbase. The narrative is a group of friends away

from civilisation who end up getting hunted down by a crazed killer. It features almost everything a horror would need in terms

of narrative. It opens with a group of friends having fun (beginning) the friends encounter a problem (middle) the

friends end up fighting for their lives (ending). It’s a very linear story which works well for horror films as their main intention is to scare and gross out the audience not make them think hard.

Lacey's 'Repertoire of Elements : Iconography 

The trailer contains all the traditional icons of horror films, we have the blood, the hanging legs, the stalker and the girls

running. We knew we needed all these to make sure it looked like a horror. We needed to try and capture the fans of this

genre but also draw in new ones.

Lacey's 'Repertoire of Elements : Style 

The trailer just like the film would, contains and is predominantly hand held camera work. The natural shakiness of the camera makes the

audience feel part of the danger, they film like they are within the film. It also contains very fast cuts and blurry moments which don’t show much detail, this is to keep the viewer interested but also intrigued. We feature many close ups to show items and expressions of horror.

But we also have made use of long shots to show how open and lonely the environment is creating a sense of vulnerability and danger

Conclusion

I believe that we used genre a lot to target our film, the horror genre is easy in a sense because of how concrete it is. There are so many icons and codes and conventions that will tell the audience its a horror. Except thrillers, horrors aren't usually confused with any other genres because they are so clear cut and distinctive, It’s easy to merge another genre with a horror like ‘comedy Horror’ but they still use the traditional codes and conventions of normal horrors so you can distinguish between the horror and the comedy.

I think our teaser trailer is very successful in appealing to an audience, because we made sure we used traditional and concrete horror codes and conventions