Subhan Naeem
1408 Coursework
The director uses a variety of techniques to interest and engage the audience so they will be interested in the movie and want to watch on, that is the whole point of file trailers. Nevertheless an audience will also expect certain things from a trailer. These things include: different camera angles, they have a huge impact on the trailer itself. The sound: diegetic and non-diegetic, without this the trailer wouldn’t be much; the different sounds also have a huge impact on the trailer. Special effects are another thing to include in a trailer, because they make the movie look more interesting and intriguing. That is the job of a trailer, to include all of these things and get the audience into the movie. The trailer usually picks out the interesting and horrific scenes (because the genre of the movie is horror/thriller) without revealing too much of the story behind the trailer, usually leaving the audience on a cliff-hanger, so they would want to watch the whole film to find out more.
Throughout the trailer the audience is introduced to four main characters: the main character, Mike Enslin (John Cusack), Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), a young girl who appears to be Mike Enslin’s daughter and a mysterious wife. The trailer has to sell itself to the audience, and it does this by revealing the two main and well known actors straight away, which gives the audience another reason to watch the whole film. The revelation of the young girl and mysterious wife has an effect on the trailer, as it gives us a few ideas and clues to the background of the story without revealing too much. The audience would obviously want to know more about these two estranged characters in the trailer, because of the ending, especially when the young girl approaches her dad, Mike Enslin. The very line “Daddy, Don’t You Love Me Any More?” leaves the audience in high suspense, at the same time being intrigued, making them want to watch the whole movie. The director knows exactly what he is doing at this point to get people to watch the whole of 1408.
The different camera angles have a huge impact on the audience, because if there was just one camera angle, the audience would get bored and the trailer wouldn’t look as interesting, despite the horrific and exceptional sounds going on in the trailer. But because of the variety of different camera angles, the audience stays engaged in the trailer, wanting to watch more and more. Different camera angles such as: CU, ECU, Mid-shot, Low-shot, High-angle, Low-angle, etc. have a huge impact: they show us a lot of what is going on in the trailer, but still without revealing too much, leaving the audience in suspense nearly all the time. This is the reason why camera angles are so important. An example of an ECU would be the extreme close up of Mike Enslin’s eye. An ECU is generally magnifying beyond what the human eye would experience in reality. At that point the audience knows something is happening, something scary and cautious or even horrific. We know this because the eye is wide open and the pupil is small, and the pupil is known to get small when you are scared. So the audience knows something interesting is happening, but the thing is the audience can’t see the action behind it, can’t see what is going on. That is the real effect of the ECU in that sort of situation. Again, another camera angle, the Mid-shot is also just as important along with all the others obviously. A Mid-shot contains a figure from the knees/waist up and is normally used for dialogue scenes, or to show some detail of action. That is exactly what is happening in the trailer at certain scenes, mainly to emphasise the scary and jumpy scenes going on. A High-angle is a brilliant camera angle in a trailer because even though it is not as extreme as a bird’s eye view, the camera is elevated above the action using a crane to give a general overview. High-angles make the object photographed seem smaller, and less significant (or scary). The object or character often gets swallowed up by their setting: they become part of a wider picture.
