Night of the Demons Teaser Trailer Deconstruction

First of all the familiar green rating card, used to clarify certification, is shown. This shows that the film has been rated R for 'restricted' due to its 'bloody horror violence/gore and language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and drug use. This indicates that these are the main themes of the film, and that the trailer will show us a few examples in short. These themes fit in with the conventions of a teen slasher film, mainly due to the idea of sexuality, drug use and bloddy horror violence. The next three shots are of the film's idents - EntertainmentOne, Seven Arts and Parallel Media. If there are films that the audience recognise as having these institutions that they like, whether or not they were the same genre, it might encourage them to be interested in this film too. The music begins with the introduction of the idents, with a slow 'jazzy' rock song playing non diegetically. This music could be to connotate the calm and relaxed attitude of the characters in the next scene.

Dispersed between the shots of the teenagers partying, there is text on red screens, the colour connotating blood and horror, highlighting a central theme. This text together reads "This Halloween get ready to party down and raise some hell". This gives a general summary of what the film will be about, and is used to involve the audience like they're characters by inviting them along through telling them to 'get ready to party down'. This will help to get the audience to relate the characters, and grab their attention so they watch the trailer the whole way through. This is why we used a similar idea of introducing the characters in a relatable way so that the viewers will continue to watch the misfortunes of the characters they have seen. When the last screen saying 'and raise some hell' ends, the music stops as one of the character's says in a voiceover 'Something's not right' before a close up of the main character, who is a tall young blonde and conventionally pretty girl (very stereotypical of character appearence in teen horror films) with a demon next to her, with a non diegetic screeching noise, before a new piece of music is started, which is more upbeat than the last.

There a few shots after this before the 'lull' in the trailer occurs, with the music stopping and the main character saying 'ew'  at the one of the demons, which brings a sense of comedy to the film, a common feature in this new and emerging genre of horror. A third song is now played with a screaming voice which adds to the tension and pace of the rest of the trailer. This is an idea that we noticed in a lot of horror film trailers, which is why in ours we have used many non diegetic sounds such as screams, laughter and whispering to create the tense atmosphere we want our audience to feel. In this section of the trailer most of the main action shots are shown, giving a brief summary of what most of the film will be about. Again dispersed between these are red text screens, this time together spelling out "The night belongs to them". The music then speeds up before reaching its climax, which then a non diegetic 'bang' is heard and the title screen is shown. The title itself is in bold white capital letters, and has a stylised font with the 'o's and 'd's having a cross instead of a gap in the letters themselves. There are also 'patches' of red on the letters, connotating blood, like the text screens, perhaps the blood of the characters, whose fate is still unknown to us. After the title there are some slower scenes shown, eventually with one showing the main girl loading a gun before saying "Come and get me mother f..." before she is cut off by the credits and a 'coming soon' screen, both with the same font as the title. This method of cutting her half way through the sentence not only leaves the story wide open, but due to the swear word being cut off, the trailer once agains creates a brief sense of comedy.

The visual effects aren't a key feature of the trailer but they still play a part. In rhe text screens there are the patches of blood that are also shown in the title screen as mentioned before. The transitions aren't very complicated, with use of fade to black and straight cuts.


How can this film trailer be used to inspire/show similarities to our media product?
The main similarities to our film are the types of characters, sub genre and makeup. Just like ours the Night of the Demons focuses on young people who may be percieved as promiscious and have a rebellious nature, dressing provactively and going to parties, who are then later punished by demons of some kind. This trailer also links to ours in terms of a new definitive sub genre of horror, teen horror, which although has been shown in films such as Halloween and Sorority Row previously, has begun to rise to prominence in recent years. The use of makeup is very similar: we have used the makeup in this trailer for inspiration when using makeup on our own actors - I think the main comparison in terms of makeup is the face of the 'demon' girl - above in the screen shot of the trailer you can see the girl covered in this makeup, and it look very similar to the shot of Emma, one of our actors, looking in the mirror when she has been possessed in our trailer.

- Rhiannon

Costume Research - Party Scene

We examined party scenes in terms of the costumes worn so that our characters would have believable costumes while they partied.

Research of films, coupled with our questionnaires concerning appearances of characters, made it clear that female characters must be physically appealing in costume and body in order to attract males, and stylish to the point of being aspirational for females so that the target population is as broad as possible. It could also be considered that the characters have sexualised costumes in order to appeal to a sense of justice when the character dies in audiences who consider sexual character immoral. This is clear in films such as 'Sorority Row', in which the main protagonists are all thin attractive girls, and they dress in a promiscuous nature that shows a lot of flesh. In this photo, for example, they are dressed for a pyjama party, and are therefore showing a lot of their legs and stomachs. Although our party is not pyjama themed, it maintains the same standards of dress.

This is seen across all genres, such as in the comedy 'Mean Girls', in which it is noted that in "girl world" costume parties are cause to dress provocatively. This can be seen in a skin-tight leather styled cat suit and a negligee style dress, as well as accessories such as animal ears. Styled hair and make up is also evidently important.

In 'Night of the Demons', this is shown through the sexualised image of a cat shown in this image. Even though the party in our film is not a costume party, the provocative dress is obvious in the low cut and tight outfit that could be lingerie. The styling of hair and make up also acts to make the character look more attractive, and we use this kind of costuming for our party scene.

In this party scene in 'Superbad', the female characters are not in the same level of provocative clothing. However, they are still wearing form fitting clothing that reveals some flesh such as lower stomach, chest and arms. This shows the stylish nature of party clothes in that they usually reveal some form of flesh in order to be seen as attractive, although there are varied degrees of clothing. For our party scene we will include short skirts and some visible chests, although we will not go to the same extent as the image above. This is especially true of the main protagonist who will survive as she must appear more moral, so is in a less revealing costume.




-Emily