ANALYSIS OF THE TRAILER INSIDIOUS.
This page will be deconstructing the trailer of the film Insidious, with regards to the camera angles/compostitions/movements, sound, mise en scene and finally editing. Here is the whole tralier and then I will start to deconstruct it.
Firstly lets have a look at the context of the film:
The film is set in modern day with a family who have just moved house. The plot of the story is that the normal family come to realise that they have powers of the paranormal. This happens when their son has a fall in the loft and goes into a state of paralysis, which doctors can't figure out why. The father and the son both have powers to travel to "The Further" which is an alternative dimension filled with demons and monsters. The vessel of the sons body starts to become controlled by a demon that is trying to access the land of the living. When the son is in 'The Further' he becomes trapped by the demon and it is up to the father to enter the realm and retrieve his son from the demons that lie ahead. But enough about the plot of the film and on with the analysis of the trailer.
Camera angles, movements and transitions.
The first section I will be looking at is the camera angles, movements and compositions. In the trailer there is a variety of shots which creates both vulnerability and accountabilty. For this section I will be taking out parts of the film for analysis along with some still frames.
Firstly lets look at the popular camera angles which are used a great deal in the trailer. There is only two types of transitions used in this trailer and they are cuts and fade/dip to blacks. These are quite effective as the dip to blacks create a sense of closure to a frame and opening to another. These dip to blacks are also used in horror trailers more than others as they build up a sense of tension when watching and a feeling of fading hope between each scenes. In this specific trailer dip to black is only used 6 times whereas the cuts are used around 65 times. This amount of cuts shows the amount of different scenes you need in a trailer and how much filming that will need to be done. There are no cross dissolves in this trailer as I think it would not look as sharp and the editing of the fast pace shots can only have cuts as cross dissolves are too slow. However, I think that a whip pan could look good in one of the chaotic scenes to create the feeling of disorentation.
The camera angles in this trailer are best to make a scary/horror atmosphere. The angles are effective to draw the eye of the audience to a specific item or feature in the shot. The use of long shots to extreme close ups are also used in this trailer. There is only one main long shot used which is of the house, this shot is significant as it plays a role of an establishing shot. This is important to tell the viewer where the story line is happening even though this shot only lasts for around one second.
Extreme close ups are used as well to bring the audiences attention to one specific feature. In this example there is a close up on the woman's eye. As there is a close up to the womans eye it shows the importance of the character in this trailer or the importance for what she is looking at. The extreme close up of this character can tell a lot about the story. As she is looking up and not down it gives the impression that whatever she is looking at is more powerful than her and has more status.
This shot in paticular is a very interesting shot as they have filmed it so that your eyes are drawn to the extending arm to the left of the frame, however, normally you should be looking as the center of the frame. This is done in two ways, due to the lighting where the figures shadow joins in to the opening door to left and so that it looks unnatural, and also the motion in which this happens as you can't see the figure until the door is opened fully. This POV (point of view) shot makes the viewer feel more involved with the story as they see what is happening though the eyes of the people involved.
Continuing on from the last point there are a lot of POV shots used in this trailer as it places the audience in the shoes of the characters and allows them to see what the character is experiencing which in this case in generally horror and fear. POV shots are used a lot and all can be seen in the video below. Along with POV shots there are also shots that are not regular in horror movies which is the example below using the Go Pro to create a fish lens effect for the womans face. This has the effect of creating a shot that not many are used to and therefore draws your attention to the womans face and the rotating room around her.
The freeze frame above and to the left shows a shot used in the trailer which uses shot composition well. There is the father and mother in the foreground looking at their son in the background. The shot has a deep focus and is focusing on the son as if there was a shallow focus you would not be able to see what the parents are looking at. An effect that is used in all high end post production is colour correction. This makes the shots look more sharp, colours enhanced and more defined (example is the Go Pro image) however, this can be used to darken the colours as well creating a gloomy and darkened apperance. This can be seen in both the examples below.
Camera motion is a feature that is key to creating a good trailer. If everything was shot on a tri-pod with all the stationary the trailer would look rubbish so you need to have different types of camera angles to produce a varied trailer. These movements will be seen in the video below and it will show the variety that a trailer uses. Having lots of different movements is key to having a good trailer, that with the movements being original movements of the camera or movements that are added in post production. An example of this would be in the video below when the boy breaks the ladder, the camera shake is added digitally afterwards.
Mise-en-scene is defined as everything inside the frame, everything from the setting to the clothes of the actors. Firstly I'm going to look at the costumes and am going to say how each one works and is effective. The parents wear normal everyday clothes with is meant to show the simplicity of the family, they are just a normal family with a man with a good job due to the tie and shirt and the woman being left at the house during the day. Costume is used in an effective way by having the the demons and ghosts wearing older clothing; the 19 century clothing with large dresses and older looking costumes. One costume that did catch my eye was the gas mask as you can only see the eyes of the character. This prop/costume is used to create a unnatural appearance and as you can only see the eyes it only give you a small part of the face to see what expression they are pulling. From these weird abstract props and costumes you can tell that it is of horror genre due to the pre-existing link between masks and horror.
Mise-en-scene
One of the main props that is used in this is the prop of the drawing of the demon. This prop introduces the main villian before we see him and as the picture is drawn in a particularly sketched out way it increases the fear for the character as we can't see him properly. This drawing shows the demon coming out of the shadows with only his face red, therefore drawing your eye towards it. I believe that seeing the main villian in sketch form first creates the feeling that he is more fearful as you don't know what he looks like only a blurred sketch.
This film like many other horror films are only filmed in small amount of settings. In this trailer in particular there are only 3 settings. There is the house which includes the loft, the front room and the kitchen, and possessed childs room, the hospital which is only has one setting of the one-way glass and then of course in the futher, which is still his house but under a different lighting. This small range of settings could be down to the budget of the film or it could be the choice of the directors to make the film seem more scary to the audience as it is happening in their house, their place of comfort and security. The lighting is used effectively as you can tell where you are by the lighting. The normal world is normal slightly yellow lighting, however, when in the futher there is a grey/blue filter that is used to make it seem different, so that the audience can differeniate between the two.
Editing.
This trailer has been edited amazingly well with quick cuts and amazing titles. These sequences link extremely well together and at the end of the trailer when there is such quick editing, I think this makes the trailer the best one out there. There are so many effects used to create the effect of choas with negative images happening with dip to whites and short shot times. The length of the shots change as the trailer continues. At the start they are fairly long with short shots being used to try and tell the viewers about the the family without boring them. However, the editing speed picks up towards the end creating a feeling of chaos.
.
The text used in this trailer is impressive with the text saying incidious, and the morphing into the word is and then back again. This happens all the way through the trailer and they also have an effect of one or two of the letters becomes slightly blurred or out of place making the text not look boring and just normal floating text. Also there is the effect of the text becoming closer as the camera as the trailer goes on, with some shots having the texting massively enhanced and then going back to normal.
Editing is used in this to compress time by ollipsis. This is so that we don't have to watch all the irrevant actons of the actors and only the parts that are needed to create a plot. This continuity editing is one that is used effectively and the editing doesn't draw attention to itself. There are some effects that are used to good ends, such as this shot to left. This has been darkened around the outside so that it creates a darkened halo effect. This represents the fading hope and approaching darkness.
Sound
Sound is one of the main features that makes this trailer such as success. The main feature that I will definatley be wanting to include on mine is the sound of the metronome playing throughout the whole piece. This starts at the beginning and even when there is silence on the scene there is a constant murmuring of the ticking. Watch the video below to see this feature.
Along with the metronome the sound of the text changing is one that is effective as it creates a sound that doesn't sound like anything. This non-diegetic music is effective as it creates the feeling that something is unnatural. The diegetic sounds of the demon over the baby monitor is effective as his voice is distorted and changed so that it becomes deeper, this creates the feeling that something is unnatural and paranormal. There has been ambient sound used with such noices such as footsteps.