Influences

Scream:

The Scream trailer opens when a simple house phone starts ringing, immediately gaining her innocents, a short haired blonde women answers the call with no hesitation. This could be considered to be the codes and conventions of a horror film as the beginning of the movie starts of soft. We know the film is a horror genre because of the many horror conventions used in the opening alone, these being things like venerable teenage girsl, isolated settings, and night time scenes.  Introducing the story subtly, “hello" she says,with a deep mysterious voice reply "hello"  leaving the women disorientated wanting to no more about the caller she confusingly asks "who is this" at this precise moment in the trailer the director added non diegetic music into the effect making a modest phone call into something bigger than what it actually is. The person behind the phone avoids revealing their identity and reluctantly but yet flirtatiously answers the question “I’ll tell you my name if you tell me yours" as the phone call continues the caller asked the women what the noise is in the background. Clueless giving an explanation "its popcorn" that particular moment the audience can see that this is a negative representation of a blonde woman because typically blondes are meant to be stupid and thoughtless. This stereotype of them is correctly shown as she tells “scream” about her current movements, but yet the caller is still unknown. This gives the caller a better understanding on why she is cooking popcorn and ironically asks if she likes scary movies. Slurring her words the women replies "uhuh” the caller once again diverts the subject; he persistently asks once more what the women's name is. This is just 30 seconds into the trailer and you can automatically see that the audience for this film is older teenagers to young adults between 15-20 as they can relate to the teenage character in the narrative. More specifically to how it relates to this target audience would be that teenagers typically stay home alone to watch movies “videos”.

 

The Strangers:

 

A modern American horror film released in 2008 about a couple in their holiday home who are lately bombarded by mass murderers in masks (convention of horror film, stereotypically killers are in masks). Due to the killers covering their faces this brings immediate animosity to the atmosphere as the audience strung with curiosity, this obtained in the trailer. The trailer also uses narrative credits to engage the viewer and explain the plot. The non-diegetic music gives an uneasy feeling this adds to atmosphere already created. This trailer uses typical conventions of a horror film, until it reaches mid trailer where country music (non-diegetic once again) is used, an unusual characteristic of a horror film trailer due to this factor I believe the audience would of found this strange, buying into the concept of the horror film. As much of the horror/thriller genre is targeted at a younger audience, the target market for this film would be 15-25. Like many thriller films the movie was rated 15, because of the use of tension instead of gore.