Analysing Film Trailers - Answers

The Woman In Black

1.       It starts off with a house, this house a history and looks like it is haunted. The main character has to do something there but is still not identified at the start of the trailer. The house is isolated in a remote area and he has to deal with all these traumatic events involving a ghost that is in the house. The locals warn him about the house and they fear it. The whole film revolves around children and bad experiences. The genre of this film is horror/mystery, this is shown through the jumpy fast soundtrack, the dark and low lit locations.

2.       There is no introduction and no end, only the main character is shown, the history of the house is missed out, and why there is a curse on the house is also not shown in the trailer. The viewer does not know what will happen to the main character, the truth is disturbed. Many scary scenes are shown throughout.

3.       There isn’t an order to the shots; the story line is mixed as the whole story isn’t wanted to be shown.  The movie is in chronological order and the trailer has only a miss match of important parts of the actual film.

4.       70 shots or more were used.

5.       The trailer starts off slow as the introduction is shown, and how they show the whole house. The editing picks up pace when there are scary and exaggerated scenes and then go back to slow so the words on the screen can be read.

6.       The transition show how the film is pieced together and also shows the main settings that are used in the film and the main concentration of the viewer is on the voice over.

7.       The words “Daniel Radcliffe” are shown as he is a very famous actor, and is used as the unique selling point.

8.       The sound used were very high pitched and many of the scenes would have a gentle fade and then a jump of high screeching etc.  There were also some parts of the trailer where a low sort of religious singing that was used to show how the film included dead people. Very loud bass sounds were used to show how the main character was scared when running through the forest.

9.       There were many close ups which would show facial reactions and expressions to events happening. Establishing shots were used to show the isolation of the character and his terrifying surroundings.