Movie Trailers

Here are a few movie trailers I have picked out for features I particuarly liked that I may want to emulate or re-create in the trailer my group makes.

This trailer is for Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003). Overall I enjoyed the trailer, but the main features that stand out for me are:

• The out of focus, background shots. By this I mean what happens at 16 seconds in, 1 minute in and 1 minutes and 20 seconds in. We're focused on whats happening in the foreground, usually a close up of a character when something happens in the out of focus background, focus is shifted and we cut almost instantly to the next shot. This simply makes me jump, but it works really well at doing that, it's unexpected, especially the first time it does this as we don't know the cloaked figure is the monster and we assume it's another scarecrow.
• The titles work well, "Every 23rd Spring, For 23 Days, It gets to eat, Welcome to day 23". It keeps that recurring theme of the number 23, the first two titles follow the same format.
• The music and musical cues work really well in my opinion. During the more serious parts where we have people being chased by the monster we have the typical cues, sharp discord notes on string instruments, and during more relaxed, less intense parts like when we're introduced to the school bus we have the bass guitar and drums playing a short phrase over and over again, although it's not sharp and discord it is clearly in a minor key, and the slow steadiness of this gives it a "Trouble Brewing" feel, or a build up. The song from about 1 minutes and 40 seconds in is Meet the Creeper by Metal artist Rob Zombie. Appropriate not just because of it's title and lyrics which fit in with the title of the movie but because Rob Zombie is himself an avid horror fan and has done a few movies himself, and might stick out if anyone were to pick up on this.

 This next trailer is for A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) directed by Wes Craven.

And again, what I liked:

• The imagery used works well, especially the little girls dressed in the white dress, playing off the idea of binary opposites, the sinister music in the background gives it a very creepy vibe.
• The trailer is almost complately narrated. Rather than leave some things to be explained by brief titles a fair part of the trailer is narrated, we're told who the main characters are, whats going on and we're given information about the movie itself like the director (in this case Wes Craven) and other films they've done.