Characters

In most horror films the villain portrayed is usually male and females are often presented as helpless, victim, Princess types.Mulvey's Male Gaze suggests film audiences have to view the character's from the perspective of a male (link to my blog post on Mulvey's Male

Gaze here). Women are therefore objectified; female viewers experience the narrative secondarily, by identifying with the male being portrayed.Thereorists have also pointed out sexualisation of the female body is present even in situations where the sexuality of a female has no relation

to the situation and context, so therefore are purely just present in films for visual pleasure.

We subverted all of this through Beatrice, who portrays the killer in our trailer. As she is the main character the viewer will be empathising with her, rather than a male.

We tried to show Beatrice's power through low angle shots and having her dressed in dark colours to imply her evilness.She gets bullied equally by both the males and females in her class, with Julie dominating the group bullying. Both Beatrice and Julie are not

sexualised as seen in other films

Cabin in the WoodsJules (Anna Hutchison) dances seductively

around the fire place whilst the camera lingers on her body, identifying her as a

sexual object

Jennifer’s BodyJennifer (Megan Fox) appears

seductive, even when only talking to a fellow female

Cabin FeverNotice how this shot lingers on her changing. The other male characters only appeared in a scene like this once, however, the scene of her

carries on for 3 shots.

Also, Julie, the popular girl is portrayed as mean and a bit of a tomboy, always completely covered. This is also is a reflection of her bad personality as she isn't presented as neat, presentable, and "lady-like" the usual popular girl conventions. To enforce this we included a scene

where she is cutting some wood in a technology room.Julie is briefly, however, portrayed as a sexual object, as Beatrice creates a fake note to Aaron, the jock, saying "Meet me at the void ;) xxx"

The winks and kisses imply some kind of sexual activity between the two.This is done to highlight Aaron's naivety, however, rather than to establish Julie as a sexual object.

This scene is also to foreshadow Aaron's death.Aaron, the jock character, does however, follow the stereotype. He takes part in the bullying of Beatrice and appears to have some sort of

relationship with Julie, the popular girl. Bobby, the clown of the group is also portrayed stereotypically, as when making fun of Beatrice's phone he says "Can you even text?" implying he has a low level of intelligence.

Setting

Our trailer is set in a school based in North London.Horror films featuring high schools usually have stock characters such as cheerleaders, football teams, the jocks etc.

However, as ours is set in a very metropolitan part of England we chose not to use those conventions as the audience would not be able to identify them. Even though such films are popular in England, they are successful as they have big name actors and directors and have high

budgets allowing the film to be as entertaining as possible.

Conventions of horror films similar to the genre of ours include college style font and the idea of cheerleaders, however we have chosen not to do this as the focus of our narrative is the character’s, the setting is only to highlight the characters.

We incorporated classrooms into our scenes to imply it’s a school, however we didn’t conform to the schooling system that is seen in such films (which are often American)

Sound

We used tense music, evil ambience and sharp cuts throughout the trailer to create a sense of fear, standard to film trailers. Foley sound was added to increase tension.

To develop this convention further I looked at The Possession trailer in great detail to see how music is used in combination with visuals to create tension. The music sped up while an image flashed rapidly; I recreated this effect to use in my trailer.

Narrative

The narrative structure of general trailers was the mould for our trailer, however we did not follow all the conventions. Stories begin with an equilibrium when all forces are equal which is then disrupted by an event which produces a chain reaction. The problem is identified and then solved. Revealing the ending would ruin audience curiosity. In disordering the narrative they audiencecan speculate about what may happen

thus enticing them to watch the film.Our trailer begins with a series of images and a news report depicting there has been some kind of incident in the school the film is set in. This immediately draws attention from the audience. It then follows on to show events that happened earlier throughout the week; resulting in the

quarantine of the school.