Research and planning: what to expect from a trailer

After analysing and watching some horror trailers, I have decided what I think is important to include when making my trailer.

In terms of sound, I think that stereotypical high pitched music is important for a horror trailer, or even if it's not high pitched it should definitely create an eerie atmosphere and put the viewers on edge.

In terms of cinematography, when watching trailers I found that we see a lot of long shots to show how isolated the characters often are, and I also realised that I saw a high number of close up shots to show fear / emotion of the characters.

For editing, there is often jump cuts to speed up the pace in areas of high action / chasing. Also, I noticed that there was a lot of cut away shots to show what was happening to each character as they often get split up, along with the long shots for isolation and the high pitch score this creates a rather creepy trailer.

For  mise-en-scene, this tends to vary on the type of horror film and where its set, for example if it's set in an isolated farmhouse in a field you would see smashed cars and the main villain would probably be an old drunken man with a shotgun chasing the characters for being in his land.

This is the type of information I get from watching horror trailers which helps me gather information for my own trailer because I know what styles to go for and this will make the genre stand out right from the beginning.