The Ring Trailer

I decided that as we are creating a trailer it would be good to look at other trailers, we intend for our trailer to be a horror so I would be appropriate to look at a trailer of a similar genre.

This is the trailer for the 2002 movie "The Ring". This movie is classed as a psychological horror, a psychological horror is a horror movie that uses the fear the characters experiences and their emotional insecurities to build tension within the movie. The trailer focuses more on the mental and emotional side of fear rather than having bits which make the audience jump. An example of this would be when the female protagonist receives a call and a whispered voice say "7 days". This doesn't scare the audience in the fact that it makes them jump, but the trailer informs the audience that 7 days after watching the video the person dies, this means the audience know what is going to happen and that the protagonist is working on a time limit and this helps build tension.

The trailer follows several codes and conventions that allow the audience to identify the genre as horror. One of these is the use of dark colours such as greys and dark blues. The trailers lighting is very low key which works well with the dark colours to create a dark and eerie atmosphere. The trailer also uses non digetic sounds to add to the suspense as it uses very slow music that involves string instruments such as violins and a piano playing high notes. The trailers sound track later speeds up but still makes use of String instruments such as violins to build tension. As the pace of the music increases so does the trailers editing, the trailer makes use of sharp quick cuts that increase in speed as the music increases.

The variation in the ring is that women have a lot of power in the movie. For example the main protagonist is a woman and the antagonist is also female (the ghost of the girl). This is a variation that we may apply in our trailer with the main antagonist being a female.

The ring was an American remake of the Japanese horror movie Ringu and when on to inspire other American remakes of Japanese movies such as The Grudge and Dark Water.

The ring had a budget of $48 million this is relatively high compared to movies of a similar genre for example Paranormal activity had a budget of only $15 000. Unfortunately this is not something we can compete with and because of this our quality will not be of a standard similar to that of the ring.

Our movie follows Todorov's narrative theory of equilibrium. The story starts with the characters being safe and having fun(Equilibrium). They then start being troubled by the ghostly antagonist (Disequilibrium). The protagonists then struggle to escape with their lives and return home safe (New equilibrium)