A Nightmare on Elm Street

 

The genre of this trailer is horror, as there is lots of violence, killing and blood, for example right at the beginning when the man gets set alight by the other grown ups. The low key lighting is also another common thing that is seen in horror films, as it leaves certain parts of the scene hidden and mysterious, and creates lots of hiding places for the villain to come out of.

The target audience for this horror film is 18+ as it is very gory and scary, and very graphic. If someone younger than 18 was to watch it, it would probably be far too frightening for them. The gender for this film would probably be more along the lines of males, than females, as although it is jumpy, it is incredibly gory and sinister, which may put some females off of it.

The pace in this trailer is quite slow to start off with, which is helpful in establishing the bad crime that is committed, which helps to create a murderer. It also shows the location of where this crime was committed, and what happened. The shots are quite quick after so that we do not fully understand everything that is happening, and the relevance of the characters. We do understand that there is a dark, dirty, scary location that everyone goes to when they fall asleep, which is where they get killed, which encourages us to watch the film to see where it is.

The music to begin with is quite slow and eerie, which sets a mood of tension, but then follows on to a child singing a dark, creepy nursery rhyme. This suggests that children will be a main focus in this film, and they are of great importance. One part of the rhyme says 'never sleep again' which informs us that if they sleep, they die, so we are encouraged to watch the film to see if they are able to stay awake. It then changes to something that sounds like a propeller, and keeps getting quicker which suggests more and more people are dying.

The shot types to begin with are establishing shots, so that we see an eerie, deserted setting, as these help to set the mood and location. We then see a long shot of someone running with a car closely following behind, which we perceive as the good guy, running away from the bad guy. After this, there are mid shots of the man who was running away, but on fire as these 'bad guys' have set him alight. This helps us to feel sympathy towards him, whether he is good or bad. Following this, there is a mid shot of three girls playing, which then blacks out to a long shot of a grown up girl, in a room full of snow. This shot makes us question who she is, and why she is in such a cold, dark room. Through this trailer there are some close ups so we are able to see facial expressions and characters faces, to help us establish their relevance and who they are. There are a lot of long shots throughout this trailer, as location is a key factor in this trailer, as that is the most scary part about it.

Throughout this trailer, there is not really any intertitles. This may be because the scenes are more important, so they need to fill up the time that an intertitle would take, with a scene to make it make more sense. The intertitles that do appear include 'From producer Michael Bay' 'Don't Fall Asleep' and the date of release. The intertitle 'Don't Fall Asleep' is effective at scaring the audience as when you are asleep it is supposed to be where you are most peaceful. It is also in white and red writing, but it looks as if it should have been white writing with red splatted on it. This could symbolise the blood that will be shed.

From the beginning of the trailer, dialogue is present so that we start to understand the origins of this film. When one of the characters is introduced, they say 'I'm having these dreams, and there's this man, and he's burned' this tells us the audience a bit of what the killer is like, and makes us wonder if they are dreaming of what is going to happen to them, or if their dream is real. 'Don't fall asleep' informs us that he kills people through their sleep, and makes us want to watch the film to find out how. 'When we finally hear the killer's voice he says 'You have nothing to worry about, this won't hurt one little bit' in a very sadistic tone, which helps us establish that the film is going to be very frightening.

The unique selling point for this trailer/film would be that the killer is present through dreams. This is effective as when you're asleep you're supposed to be peaceful and at rest, but due to this killer they cannot sleep, but they can't stay awake forever either.