Whilst watching our trailer without any sound effects running throughout, it made it seem very mundane and not as scary as what we set out to achieve. However, once we started adding in soundtracks and horror sound effects we found that our trailer connoted the horror genre more and it helped the trailer to build up tension and suspense.
Through our trailer we use a variety of sound effects to create tension in our horror trailer as well as connoting the horror genre. We found these sound effects from a variety of websites, including:
During our analysis of existing horror film trailers, we found that a common theme that ran through most of them in relation to sound was that, often a happy more joyous soundtrack would be played at the start of the trailer to show that the horror hadn't prevailed yet. We wanted to portray the same theme in our trailer, so our first enquiry when it came to finding music for our piece was to find a soundtrack that we could use for a short amount of time at the start of the clip. Research led us to 'Turn around look at me' by the Bee Gee's which we thought was very fitting and worked extremely well with our piece. The rhythm of the song is quite slow paced but has a happy beat to it, which is what we wanted to achieve when finding a song because the placement of this soundtrack is in conjunction with action that has not yet seen any horror prevail. This song also stood out to us because of the lyrics. Our trailer falls into the psychological horror sub-genre, so the lyrics in this song such as 'there is someone walking behind you', 'turn around, look at me' are very representative of the action that takes place in our trailer.
We only used 15 seconds of this song at the start of the trailer and we found it on YouTube. We then went through the process of downloading it through YouTube converter which then resulted in it being downloaded onto ITunes; enabling us to put it onto IMovie.
Using our creative skills on IMovie we were able to compile all the different sound effects together, as well as adding in a non copyright backing track through part of the trailer, to make our trailer as effective as possible. Our sound effects included heavy breathing, screaming, heartbeats and glass smashing to make our trailer extremely realistic.
We wanted to avoid using the natural sound that came with the clip when it was recorded because the use of artificial sound is more effective and doesn't carry with it any background noise which would break the tension of the clip. Despite this however, on a couple of occasions, using the natural sound that was recorded with the clip worked really well. This included:
- the natural sound of the front door handle being opened which also served the purpose of sharply cutting the Bee Gees soundtrack to show the progression of sound
- the natural sound of the living room door handle when the girl is struggling to open it
- when the girl is running down the stairs, her hand squeaked against the banister. We decided to keep this sound in also
The final way in which we added to our trailer through sound was through the use of voice overs. We wanted to include some dialogue at the start to fulfil the audiences need of gaining information (Uses and Gratifications theory.) We wanted to make it clear to the audience why the girls were going to this house so that the trailer made complete sense to them.
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