Form research of horror film trailers.

• Film trailers always start with this type of message. The message generally changes with the type of film which is being promoted. The colours which the audience messages are is either green or red.

• The first one say that the film which is about to be promoted is available for all audiences. On this screen, it always shows the MPAA rating and also tells the audience what it mean. This means that the film trailer which about to be shown adheres the motion picture standards and includes, if any, little amounts of cursing and/or violence.

• The second one is a darker shade of green and instead of saying ‘All audiences’ says ’Appropriate audiences’. This one means that the audience about to view the film should be of the age which the MPAA rating is. A film which is certificate 15 should only be viewed by an audience of the age 15 or over.

• The next one has a red background compared to the other ones which have a green one. This means that the film the trailer is for doesn’t adhere to the motion picture standards. These trailers are likely to contain scenes which are seen as inappropriate for children, for example; Nudity. This graphic will only really be shown before a film R-rated or unrated.

• A yellow graphic was created to indicate restricted content only for distribution on the internet.

Distribution and Production CompanyThe next graphic that comes up in the trailer is the distribution company ‘New Line Cinema’, in the case of Friday the 13th (2009). The colours for the distributor companies logo has changed to show the audience the genre of the film. These colours are black and red, which are conventional of the horror genre. The picture of the video roll in the logo seems to look distorted in the graphic for the horror film. The distorted image links with the horror genre as it cannot be seen clearly, just like the antagonist from a horror film who cannot be seen easily by the protagonist in the film. This new logo made for horror films distributed by ‘New Line Cinema’ allows the audience to identify the genre of the film without watching the actual film.

The production company of the film is next up, this is Paramount for the film ‘Friday the 13th’. However the original Paramount sequence is not in the same colour as the one in this film trailer. The colours for the sequences for the horror films are Red, black and grey, the same as the colours of the distribution company. These colours are conventional of horror films and allow the audience to identify the genre of the film. This sequence from ‘Paramount’ is seen as geocentric, this is because the colours of the sequence has adapted to the genre of the film, but the iconic mountain with stars around the peak has stayed to show the well-known brand.

Visuals The first piece of typography which appears in the film trailer is ‘From Producer Michael Bay’. The name of the well-known producer seems to be in Bold, which mean that part of the text is suppose to stand out to the audience. This has been done because Michael Bay is a world famous producer which means that lots of people know him, which will make people who like Michael Bay, want to watch the film. The ‘From Producer’ part of this text is in capital letter but isn’t in bold, which means that it isn’t suppose to stand out to the audience as it isn’t important compared to the rest of the text.

The next piece of typography seen in the film trailer says about the director of the film. The distributors of the film has made sure that the audience know that this film has been directed by someone who has directed another world-famous, well-known, successful film. This will attract fans of the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ as they will believe that the film will be as good, if not better.

One of the main pieces of typography in the trailer for ‘Friday the 13th’ is the title from the film. The main word (and number) ‘Friday’ and ’13’ both have a large font size and are bold. The font for the ‘13’ is a lot bigger than ‘Friday’ in the title as Friday isn’t seen to be scary however Friday the 13th is. Without the 13, Friday is just a normal day. The ‘13’ is in the colour red which is seen to connote danger which again if the audience didn’t already know, the film genre is horror. The rest of the title is in the colour white, this is because the colour white contrasts the best with black.

The last piece of typography which comes up is a final screen to the whole trailer. This contains both the distribution and production company names, the producers name and the names of all of the main actors in the film. All of main text on this shot is in bold so that the main information stands out to the audience. The colour of the text at this part of the trailer

At the end of the film trailer, along with the names of all of the main characters is the website URL. This has been used to allow the audience, if they wish to know more, to visit the website for the film. An example of the website URL in the trailer is in the ‘Friday the 13th’ trailer. The end of the trailer also shows a ‘recap’ of the films production company, however as these have already been showed, the logo’s are small and quite unnoticeable due to the pace of that specific shot. None of the logo’s for the production company or distribution company are in colour, this is because it’s keeping with the shots colour scheme of black, white and grey.

The very last shot in the Friday the 13th trailer is the release date of the film. This information has been put on a page by itself so that it is the only information which the audience will read. Out of all the whole final sequence of the trailer, the information of the release date stays on the longest. This means that it is also a very important piece of information for the film to be successful and appeal to it’s audience. Again, this being an important piece of information, the writing is in bold

The whole of the final sequence has the font colour of white. This is being used because the background is black and white is the best colour to contrast with black.

As it can be seen by these two shots (Produced by from near the start of the trailer and the producer and companies involved at the end of the trailer) The films typography stays exactly the same throughout the entirety of the trailer. Not only does the colour scheme of black background and white writing stay the same but also the font also stays the same. The font seems to be a san-serif font and all of the letter in the writing are in capital letters.

The writing looks like it could be in the font Arial and Arial Black as it is bold and can be read really easily.