Paranormal Activity 1 Trailer

The title is always shown at the end of the clip, this is so that the audience have to continue watching until the end to find out what it actually is and so that the title stays in the audiences memory.In the trailer we are not told who stars in the film because there are no big stars in it as it was a low budget film. The scenes that we saw in the trailer were the reactions of the audience who were previewing the film, and then from the actual film content it began with soft scenes and establishing shots to give us the idea of where it is and what is happening, then it leads to tense, suspense building scenes and then goes onto jumpy and scary scenes. There is no music used within the trailer, just ambient sounds to draw the view in and create atmosphere. The speed of editing at the start of the clip is quite slow, to first draw the viewer in, then the cuts progress to get quicker and quicker until they reach a sudden ending. On the very last frame of the trailer it is telling you how to get the movie shown in your area, or to ‘Demand it’ by following the link shown at the bottom of the screen. Event 1: Main male character is seen holding a video camera. Questions this leads to: What is he filming/hoping to film and why is he trying to film it? Event 2: Couple asleep in bed. Questions this lead to: What’s going to happen to them? Is there something in the house? Are they going to get hurt? Event 3: Light quickly swinging in the lounge. Questions this leads to: What has happened? Who or what has caused it? What they are going to do to protect their selves? Event 4: The flour that they had put on the floor has been moved and there are footsteps on the floor. Questions this leads to: Was it a ghost? What does it want with the people? Will it harm them? We do get a strong sense of narrative from this trailer, as it shows us the beginning and what they are trying to do a long with some of the events that happen throughout the film. The only thing we do not know is the ending, therefore leaving the audience wondering what does happen.From the trailer we do get a general gist of what happens in the trailer and it creates a good tense and eerie atmosphere.The typing at the beginning of the trailer begins to build suspense straight away, then the ambient sounds used create the creepy horror atmosphere and the dark scenes also do this, making us realise it is a horror genre straight away. I think the film is aimed at a late teenage audience to any age above depending on what genre of film they prefer. In this trailer we are seeing more footage of the audiences reactions to the film than the actual film footage, this would be a unique selling point for this film as it is showing the effects the film had on the other people and making the audience wonder what is happening in these scenes. ‘Paranormal Activity is one of the scariest movies of all time.’ By ‘bloody disgusting’ a horror movie review website. ‘Genuinely Horrifying’ by ‘film threat’ another online critic website. ‘The entire auditorium was freaked out of their minds.. people were physically shaken.’ By Dread central. This gives us an idea that the target audience for this film would be people that would want to be scared, and enjoy being scared, typically the people who would watch this film would also maybe be fans of other supernatural horror films such as the Haunting in Connecticut and Amityville Horror