Catfsh

As we will be creating our own horror movie trailers in the future, we looked at some horror trailers as research in order to learn what makes a good horror trailer. We looked at Catfish as it has a low budget, and we will be working on a very low budget.

Catfish is a film documentary that follows a man (Nev) trying to meet his online girlfriend in real life. However, as the story progresses it begins to seem that his the girl that he has been talking to (Megan) may not have been completely honest about her identity. 

In the trailer, there is around 68 camera shots, many of which are during a 2.20 trailer. Within the trailer there are 6 characters: Nev, Nev's two friends and Megan, as well as Megan's sister and mum. There are also other members of Megan's Facebook family but they are not heavily featured in the trailer which suggests that they are not as important as characters within the narrative.

There appears to be only one narrative in the film, in which a man goes on a road trip to find a girl who he met on Facebook. 

The main settings in the film are: Nev's house, the car, Megan's house (and outside of it) and a ballet studio/theatre. The car is seemingly one of the most important settings in the film as a lot of the film is focused on the journey.

The non-diegetic music starts quite upbeat but as the story develops it becomes more sinister. Over the music there is also a non-diegetic voiceover by Nev, explaining some of the narrative.

There were 12 intertitles in the trailer and almost all of them were in a typewriter style. Intertitles included reviews of the film, introductions to characters, details of the film, and the last intertitle was the title of the film.

A good film trailer  for a horror movie includes lots of quick shots and a range of settings. Quick shots increases the excitement of the audience as so much appears to be going on in such a short space of time. Having a range of settings is also good for this. It should give enough information for the audience to be able to follow the general direction of the film without giving away the most important twists and revelations. This creates suspense meaning the audience are more likely to want to watch the film so that they can find out what happens. Music is important within a trailer as it sets the mood of what you are about to watch. Many movie trailers choose to include reviews of the film in the trailer, especially those by trusted journalists and film critics. This makes the audience trust the review and once again, interests them in the film.

During our research, we also looked at trailers from 'The Black Pond', 'The Gallows', 'London to Brighton', 'Leave to Remain' and 'Monsters' as these are also horror films that had a low budget. We found that on average, they had similar features to Catfish, i.e. the amount of shots, settings, characters, as well as the type of music etc. This solidified our view of what should be in a horror trailer and gave us inspiration as all the films had a low budget and appeared to be impressive, and we have a low budget.