Gothika Trailer Deconstruction

At first there is a voice over from one of the characters talking to her therapist trying to solve her problems. This voice over then matches up with the voices and characters on screen. Usually trailers display their background story through acting, however, this trailer has the background story physically written on screen in white and red (stereotypical horror genre colours).

Pathetic fallacy plays a large part in this trailer as it signifies something bad is going to happen as in relation to the conventions of the horror genre. However, the onscreen images are completely different to the music playing. There is a non-diegetic high pitched, slow tune playing, however, in a strange way, it is still parallel to what the audience are seeing on screen. The transitions used here are slow fade to black transitions as the atmosphere is quite calm and relaxed due to the fact nothing scary has happened.

The screaming, tire screeching and crashing noises are some of the many that are used frequently within horror films as they are sounds of alarm. This is followed by a girl standing in the middle of the road. This is creepy by anyones standards and therefore puts the audience on the edge of their seats. Low level lighting is used at this point in the trailer as it then becomes slightly difficult to see (and people are proven to be more scared of what they can't see, than what they can). As the images on screen are difficult to see, having the loud scream at the end of the scene, makes the audience jump as they weren't expecting it.

This is where the editing takes control of the mood of the trailer. As the editing speeds up to fast pace straight cuts, the clips themselves begin to get shorter building tension and suspense with the audience. As the editing speeds up, so does the music. The high pitch non-diegetic sound we heard before is now up beat, as well as louder, and very action-like.

Camera angles within this trailer are crucial as they show the once powerful doctor is now a vulnerably inmate with no one to help her. The girl the audience saw at the beginning, keeps appearing in the trailer, reminding the audience how the main character got from where she was to where she is now. This is a good factor as it also adds a slight scare factor for the audience as they remember what she did to the main character.

This is followed finally by the title with the stereotypical horror genre colours of red white and black, as it is easy for the audience to associate it with the horror genre.