Oculus trailer

The trailer for the film Oculus follows the conventions of a horror film trailer. The colours used in the film straight away show the genre of the film as they are dark and create a very moody atmosphere. The trailer is also set at night which creates pathetic fallacy right from the beginning of the trailer.
The voices shows in the trailer are whispers; this creates an eerie feel to the trailer and makes the audience feel like they’re listening into something that they shouldn’t be listening to. The music and sound effects used in the trailer build up tension and create suspense; it also helps to increase the pace of the trailer as it gets towards the end. As the pace increases the clips also get shorter and there is a flickering effect to the trailer. Another main feature of a film trailer is an enigma and the use of the short clips help to create this as the audience are left trying to piece together the short pieces of information they have been given in order to work out the story.
The text used in the advert gives clues of the story to the audience but it leaves them asking even more questions, this creates enigma and makes the audience more likely to watch the film as they want their questions answered. When the titles come up on the trailer the background is black and the text is lit up creating contrast and making the text stand out even more. The name of the film is the last thing that is revealed in the trailer, each letter slowly comes up on the screen. Oculus is a circular window, this could possibly hint that the story of the film has a circular narrative, but again nothing about the film is told to the audience.
Things such as a mirror, a basement, old photos and a teenage girl as a main character are things stereotypically linked to horror films. The protagonist also has her nails painted red which is a symbol of danger. Throughout the trailer it is explained that the girls little brother has just been discharged from a mental hospital, this gives slues to who the bad person is going to be in the film. The camera angles also portray characters in good or bad ways. For example, the over shoulder shot allows the audience to connect with the good character as she makes eye contact with the camera and you can see all of her face, on the other hand the bad character is lower down than her and he is blurred which doesn’t allow the audience to connect with him giving them negative views of him.