Comparing The Exorcist 1973, Jaws 1975 and Halloween 1978

In each of the opening scenes in the horror trailers, each of them opened with a voice over explaining the background of what the film is about and also the voice over sets the scene. For example in the trailer for Jaws the opening scene is a camera panning through the water and the voice over is describing the beast, which was unknown and only now it is starting to rise to the surface. In the trailers for The Exorcist and Halloween the voice-overs sets the scene and introduce the audience to their worst nightmare. In both trailers the voice-overs are used on an establishing shot, this shot introduces the audience again to where the film is going to be set.

The main convection I noticed in each of the trailers was that they never showed the villain in the film. For example at the beginning of The Exorcist trailer the mother walked into the girls room and displayed a shocked face but the cameras never turned to the girl revealing who she is. Also in the Jaws trailer the voice over talked about the beast and still it was never shown in the trailer, the attacks in the trailers were shown from above the water not revealing the identity of the beast. Halloween used the same technique during the whole trailer, the victim was always running away or being chased by the villain but again the identity was not revealed, the villain was mostly lurking in the darkness. The technique being used in horror trailers I think is very effective because by not revealing who the villain is it makes the audience more curious about who it is and makes the want to watch the whole film to find out. Also if in the trailers it showed who the villain was then it will be giving the main story away and the film wouldn’t be as scary as not knowing who it is. 

Music played a big part in each of the trailers; the music started off calm at the beginning and built up towards the end. Also when something bad was going to happen the music started to get louder which gets your heart racing because the music becomes intense and the audience knows that something is going to happen but they don’t know what. I think if trailers and films didn’t have music it wouldn’t be as scary, because for example if something jumped out at you it wouldn’t be as scary as if someone jumped out at you but music was played with it.