Paranormal Activity 4

The genre of this trailer is supernatural horror. This is made obvious to us through the flicking lights, and dark shadows cast over people. The lighting in this trailer is generally quite dark which is common in horror films, as in darkness not everything can be seen, so the thought of something lurking in the shadows is frightening to the viewers of the trailer. Supernatural horrors involve spirits and demons, so the flicking lights are common to this theme as lights do not really turn off themselves or flick unless something is happening to them. In supernaturals there are also a lot of 'did I just see that?' moments, which is relevant to this film as when shadowed people appear throughout the trailer, we wonder if we actually did just see them.

The target audience for this film would most likely be 15-24 as there is nothing too gory or scary for a younger audience, but it is still jumpy, so would still captivate an older audience. The use of a young female teenager also makes the film relevant to teens as they can relate to her and understand what she is going through. I think this film could appeal to males and females, as it is scary, so boys would like it, but it is not gory, so girls could enjoy it too.

The pace in this trailer is quite fast at the beginning, where we see a family and their kids. The scenes move quickly so we only see glimpses, and may suggest that they are not an important focus. Since this film is the 4th in a sequel, some scenes from the past films are shown but very quickly, in order to find a common ground with their previous audience members, and to remind the audience of what happened in the past films, so that the trailer makes more sense.

The music at the beginning is quite dark and creepy, with the occasional drum beat. There are loud bangs when important, scary parts happen, but when it follows onto the new characters being introduced, the music stops. The sound of a camera breaking up can be heard, but the music stops all together when a character is talking. When the young girl's camera starts to break up and go fuzzy, the music becomes scary again, which suggests something bad is going to happen to her as she is vulnerable and no one is there to help her.

The shot types in this trailer tend to be close UPS to start with so that we can establish characters and who they are. There are some high angle shots to show rooms with people in and long shots to show the difference of rooms. There is also some over the shoulder shots, so that we are able to establish which character is talking to who, and the relationship between them. Most of the shot's are close ups as the girl is holding her laptop with the camera most of the time, except for when she looks out the window and a little boy is standing there, which is shown in a high angle shot. This makes him look small and scary as a cliche of horror films is the evil children.

There are quite a lot of intertitles in this trailer, to help to establish the story behind it. These include 'In 2006' 'They disappeared' 'which gives us a bit of background information about the characters and what happened to cause all the problems that are going to occur. This October' informs us of when it is going to come to our screens, so that people can be prepared to go and watch it, and keep their diary free and 'All the activity' 'Has led to this' frightens the audience and makes them inquisitive as to what is going to happen, to make it scarier than the other 3.

There is quite a lot of dialogue in this trailer, as the young blonde girl tells her family and friends about the weird things that are happening. This is effective as it tells us, the audience, a bit about the film and what is happening to her family since this little boy has come along. Without the dialogue in this trailer, it probably would not make sense as it would just be a lot of random scenes thrown together.

There isn't a voice over in this trailer as the girl tells us everything there is to know. With a voice over too much of the film would be given away, causing the scare appeal to be lower.