Textual Analysis - Trailer - Beverley

Film title: The Strangers
Year of release: 2008
Director: Bryan Bertino
Producers: Nathan Kahane, Doug Davison and Roy Lee
Production company: Rogue and Intrepid Pictures
Actors: Scott Speedman, LIv Tyler and Gemma Ward

The strangers is a horror thriller film that came out in 2008.

The strangers was produced by Rogue and Intrepid Pictures made on a budget of $9miliion. These co working companys have produced other films which include: Doomsday and Balls of fury.

The trailer starts of with images and pictures a common convention that takes place with film trailers. There is music playing in the background with the images which shows the audience people’s dreams home. The music playing is very jolly, playful and calm. This matches the images of the houses which are being shown since the houses being showed in the images are big pretty houses.

After 24 seconds however the images change and there is a contract within the house shown on the images. The music also changes with the music to more suspicious music. The colours used with the new images are dark. Red, black and grey are used where as in the other images at the begging out the trailer the houses looked very bright. This shows the audience that things are no longer jolly and that something is about to happen. This then reflects the fact the ‘the strangers’ is a horror film.

After the images the narrative starts to be shown. The first thing the audience is shown is the location of the trailer. We can see that it is located in a house which would have been obviously from all the previous images that were being shown from before in the trailer. There is low key lighting since it is night time. The house seems to be a little bit isolated since from the wide angle shot we can only see tress around surrounding the house. This is shown to us through a medium long shot.

The characters are then shown to us after this. We see both a man and a woman. The man dressed formal wearing and black suit with a white shirt and the women taking of a formal occasional dress. This may illustrate to the audience that the couple are coming back from somewhere. We can tell there a couple since the man is lighting candles which suggests that he was going to have a romantic night with his partner and because when we see the man and woman together. The way is which woman is touching her partner which is shown to us through a close up shot shows us that they have a romantic connection this close up shot is also a two shot since we are seeing both the man and the woman. The woman then goes on to say “I love you Jimmy” and he replays “you are my girl” whilst they are both kissing and touching each other. The fact that there seems to be just two people in a big house fits in very well with the horror convention since a lot of horror films normally takes place when there isn’t a lot of people in a house is they cant really do much since there is only two of them in a big house anything could happen and anything can take place.

Hard sound effects are used when there is a knock on the door. The music at this point then changes again which may suggest that something mysterious is about to happen because of the knock on the door. The music sounds very dull and low. A quick cut transition is shown to us showing the female partner going against the door to say hello this is a medium close up. Dialogue is used before this on the man saying “Its 4 in the morning” this shows us that the couple were not expecting any visitors at this time and where in shock that there was a knock at the door. this would challenge any convention in a film or in real life since if the someone knocked the door at 4 o clock in the morning it would normally be the man to go and see who its was at that time in the morning rather than the woman. Whilst the lady is on the door a voice tells her that she is going to die. The voice sounds like a female’s voice who is whispering. After this the screen turns blank and nothing is shown. From this point onwards the pacing of the trailer changes. Hard loud sound effects are used to illustrate danger. Quick transitions are used to show different images. From this a quick cut is used to show the male partner holding a knife in this hand. From the non verbal communication from his facial expressions we can see that Jimmy looks like he is in shock at that he is very scared. At the same time we hear a scream in the background while Jimmy is leaning back to protect him. There is then another quick cut to fast moving different images. A quick flash is shown to us of the girl partner then back to the images which contain someone holding a knife a girl screaming and one which shows the word killer. The font used is bold and red which could represent blood. The word killer is in capital letters and looks like it was written by hand on a mirror or something that contains glass. This is presented to us through a close up so that the audience are able to read what it says and for the audience to understand that there is a killer in the house which is a common convention used in horror films.

The next images shown from this point all contains a person wearing a white mask in the background. We are aware that this must be the killer however we can not see the so called killers face because of the white mask. However these all occur through quick cuts when shows the audience that the killer is has a lot of speed and is dangerous. This also supports the horror convention of not being able to know who the killer is in the film due to them being hidden. The killer/ intruder is hidden since he/she is wearing a mask.

The trailer then goes back to showing images one of the images we can see that there are 3 people wearing the mask which suggest that there is more than one killer yet we know that there is only two people in the house and they are defiantly out numbered. So due to this we know that the couple are def in trouble. Random screams occur in the background while the images are changing followed by quick chopping noises.

The trailer then finishes at this point by having a black empty screen and then by cutting to the name of the film ‘the strangers’. The trailer was effectively edited since at the begging of the trailer we don’t really expect much as an audience we are just getting into the story due to the slow pace in which the story was being shown until after 51 seconds into the trailer where everything changed. This trailer contained a lot of still images as well as footage from the film. The images used were edited well since the differences in the cuts between the images matched with the music in the background. At the begging when they were showing different house the images very not going as fast since they contained writing which had to be read and since it made the audience feel really calm. The images near the ending of the trailer however where the complete opposite danger was represented to the audience from both the fast images and the background music.

The purpose of this trailer is to promote the film the strangers. This trailer could be seen as a taster or teaser or what the film is about. The trailer is very short and snappy which will make people curious and due to this people would want to go and watch the film the strangers creating a teaser trailer could also be seen as a way of advertising. The reaction is which people get from the teaser trailer will determine whether they watch the film or not. Through this trailer we were not told everything we would like to know for example whether the couple survived which will make the audience more eager to watch the film.