There are thousands of different sounds used in trailers and all these sounds normally are produced from the iconography of the genre. There are two types of sounds that are used in trailers and they are diegetic and non diegetic sounds.  They both play an important role in creating the atmosphere of a horror trailer.  This page is going to show the different types of sounds that are typically used in a horror trailer. 

 

Firstly lets look at diegetic (everything inside the frame) music:

 

- In almost all horror trailers there is/will be a scream of some kind. This is due to screams normally showing pure terror and is the last resort that humans fall back on to be heard before death. Also screams are examples of extreme pain.  Here are a few examples below taken from different films or stock audio:

 

 

 

 

- Not all sounds are dialect, there are several sounds which are enhanced in post production to try and make the audience seem closer to the action. The sound of a stabbing knife into flesh or even the sound of a throwing knife will always be enhanced. Below running from left to right is the sound of  a throwing knife followed by the sound of sharpening a knife and finally stabbing sounds.

 

 

 

 

 

One effect that I will be using in my trailer is the enhancing of someones breathing. This normally makes the audience think that they are so close to the actors that they can hear them breathe. This gives quite an isolated feeling to the character as there is no other noise apart from the sound of their breath. This is also seen with heart beats, if the audience can hear the heart beat of the characters it shows how close they are in the narrative.  

 

 

 

 

 

The final feature that I shall be looking at is the morphing and changing of the voice. This is done by overlaying the same dialect with different pitches. In the examples below they have increased the pitch to try to make it off-putting, however in a lot of films you see the opposite, with the voice changer bringing the pitch lower so the voice is deepened. 

 

 

 

 

 

There are two sides to this coin, with diegetic sound being key, there needs to be non-diegetic sound added over the top of the footage to either build tension or to create a horror atmosphere. Here are some examples of ambient music that is added in afterwards to try and create a horror atmosphere: