My chosen genre.

After looking at several different trailers and their conventions, I have decided that the genre of my trailer will be horror. I will include lots of conventions in the trailer so that my audience will be able to pick up on the genre. Some of the conventions of horror trailers that I will include will be: dark and brief shots, quick paced editing, creepy/intense music, tension and seclusion, and the resolution unknown which will leave the audience asking questions.

Horror films are designed to elicit all kinds of emotions from the audience such as fear, terror and horror. Many horror films have similar plots that include themes such as death, the supernatural or mental illness. There are many sub-genres of horror: slasher, teen terror, serial killers, satanic, Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. Some horror films also include elements from other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, black comedy, and thrillers.

Horror films have been around since the 1890’s when the first depictions of supernatural events appeared in the form of short, silent movies. The early 20th century brought the first monster to appear in a full-length horror film, Quasimodo. In the early 1930s American film producers, such as Universal Pictures, popularised the horror film, creating a series of successful Gothic films including Dracula and Frankenstein. In the 1950’s the tone of horror films shifted away from the gothic, towards concerns that some saw as being more relevant to the late-Century audience. The horror film began to fall into three sub-genres:
• the horror-of-personality film; these are films that evoke horror through villains that are human but have horrific personalities, as opposed to a supernatural being.
• the horror-of-armageddon film; this type of film attempts to signify the end of the world, or at least the end of the world as we know it, owing some horrific event.
• the horror-of-the-demonic film; this type of film often features an antagonist that is supernatural.
Films of the horror-of-personality sub-genre continued to appear throughout the centuries, with 1991's The Silence of the Lambs as an example.

The horror movie received a huge revival in the late 70’s, early 80’s. More films started referring to the occult such as The Exorcist. Also, “evil children” and reincarnation became popular subjects. The success of the horror genre in the 70’s and early 80’s died in the late 80’s and throughout most of the 90’s. Many horror films caused controversy because of the ease of availability to children, therefore many films were dubbed as "video nasties" and where banned. The horror genre had worn itself out with the nonstop slasher and gore films in the 70’s and 80’s. The adolescent audience of the previous decade grew up, and the replacement audience was being captured instead by the explosion of science-fiction and fantasy. To re-connect with its audience horror became more self-mockingly ironic. An example would be the parody hit Scream, along with I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. They made the horror genre, once again, extremely popular.

The start of the 2000s saw a quiet period for the genre. The re-release of a restored version of The Exorcist in September 2000 was successful despite the film having been available on home video for years. Final Destination marked a successful revival of clever, teen-centered horror, as well as the Jeepers Creepers series. Some notable trends to horror films in the 2000s are:
• the emergence of remakes of Asian horror movies, such as The Ring, and The Grudge.
• the major return of the zombie genre in horror movies.
• the larger trend is the return to the extreme, graphic violence; films like Audition, Wrong Turn, and Wolf Creek. An extension of this trend was horror with depictions of torture, suffering and violent deaths, with films like Saw, and Hostel, and their sequels.