Research Into Horror Trailers - Sorority Row (2009)

The Sorority Row trailer has several conventions  of a trailer in it such as: We are not shown the  story in narrative order, the trailer builds to a  climax, where it ends, conversations consisting of  one line each and they showcased the stars of the  film.

 Most of the typical conventions of a trailer were  incorporated in the sorority row trailer to create a  narrative for the audience and build suspense.  From the trailer, I was able to tell that the narrative  would be about a group of friends who murdered  there friends by accident and decided to keep it a  secret but someone finds out about it and they each  start getting killed by whoever knows. The music used was effective in building up a climax and making certain scenes more scary. In one scene a chant of a sorority is used which links with the title of the film and also links with the main characters of the film as they are part of a sorority and they are the ones who killed their friend in the beginning. A sorority is normally meant to be peaceful and fun but this film goes against that and turns something fun into something dark and evil.

I've created a collage of the most effective clips from the trailer in my opinion. 'A secret' and 'and death' made me instantly think of the horror genre. The word death connotes horror and tells me something bad is going to happen in the film. It made me think that the secret would lead to the deaths of the people who kept the secret, a lot of enigma was used to make an audience question what all these different titles are about. The trailer was able to create a narrative for an audience and didn't give too much away. The trailer was able to show the murder weapon used for the friend which linked with the image that was found on the phone from the text that all the girls received from an anonymous person which I presume is the killer. The second image on the top row says 'You're Next', this shows there's a hunt going on and something has happened before for someone to say there will be more victims. The actual words are written in blood and the colour red connotes danger. It's typical to see blood in a horror movie. Isolated settings was used when they drove to the place where they were going to bury their friend. Isolated settings is a typical convention of a horror film, night time settings and low key lighting were also used create suspense and fear as shadows were used too, all these elements made the genre very evident. On the first picture in the third row, all that's shown is a girl being dragged half way off the screen, this immediately makes an audience know that she's either unconscious or dead. The trailer consisted of mainly the colour black, the colour black represents darkness, mystery, death, evil and fear which all link with the horror genre. Pull focus was used to show all the actions that were going on, when the pull focus effect was used, so was sudden loud music which made it seem more scary. Music plays a key role in making the trailer more scary.