Sound

During our trailer we used a variety of sound techniques, some of the shots have backing music edited over them, some use the sounds of the clip and others shots use both.
Blumhouse productions was  one of our institutions and it has some very effective music over its title sequence, because of this we didn’t add any other sounds over it. Although Blumhouse productions title has their own music, our other institution, Brain Damage Films, had none. The music we added over these titles carried on over onto the first few clips. This bit of music is quite slow in pace and compromised of not too many different sounds, it is almost monophonic which is good to have near the start of a trailer because it allows for a less subtle increase of pace as the trailer progresses. It starts off calm but then gradually becomes more high pitched and eerie. The flow of the music is abruptly stopped at the start of a clip with some brief monologue which is used to introduce the plot of the film and the presence of evil. We used the abrupt stop in an attempt to grab the audience’s attention although looking back on it, a fade would have probably worked and sounded better.  After this clip some more backing music is added in the form of an increasing loud and fast heart beat, this is very effective at building the tension that the audience feels and helps give them the impression that the film fits the genre when paired with the fast paced clips. The denotation paired with the heart beat also allows the audience to feel how the character is feeling.
The increasing pace of this trailer is common in trailers in general but especially in horror trailers, conforming to the conventions of other horror trailers is effective at assuring the audience that the film will include the things they expect from a horror film. Being a new film with no sequels or prequels it would be risky to use a trailer that subverts all the norms and clichés of horror trailers. Some aspects of the trailer subverts the conventions, having our own choice of music over the distribution company is not common in any genre, but the only other option was to have none so we had to do it. Subverting convention and clichés can be risky but in our trailer many have been conformed to, this can make the little subversion effective at peaking audience interest.