Audience essay

To create a successfully scary trailer, there are theories that the audience theory consists of which the trailer should follow as it analyses the behaviour and reaction towards horror movie genres. The better the reactions from the audience, the better the trailer is therefore analysing them may help improve of future trailer.

The Hypodermic model theory suggests that the deeper messages in movies and trailers are "injected" into the audience and can influence their actions and mindsets towards things e.g. The constant convention of darkness being connoted as evil has influenced our mindsets towards the dark so much so that now people are scared not of the dark but of what it holds as in horror movies there's always a a physical/spiritual form of evil that can hurt us. Our trailer denotes a girl walking into the dark woods and being hurt by a mysterious antagonist which would therefore influence the audience eventually that being outside in the dark is dangerous. This mindset would then lead to a change in behaviour such as not going out at night alone.

The desensitisation theory suggests that overtime as people are used to watching certain films such as violent horror movies, they are now "immune" to them. This means that although there may be blood, gore and graphic scenes, the audience has been so exposed to it that it no longer gives them the same pleasures it once did. The trailer my group and I created follows this theory as the thought of someone being physically hurt by someone else is no longer "scary" as it has been normalised over the years with increasing numbers of assaults and murders. A factor which could help battle this theory a bit is by including more violent scenes with special effects used to emphasise the damage done.

The copycat theory suggests that once the audience has watched a horror movie, the subliminal messages presented to them can now be repeated in reality as the audience has now blurred the two. It can be argued that this is a positive theory for our trailer to follow as it would prevent psychological damages done to an audience of which it is inappropriate for however, the messages sent may not be what influences the audience as everyone interprets things differently. Our trailer denotes the girl wandering in the woods consequently potentially influencing the audience to also wander into the woods out of curiosity however, someone else from the audience may interpret that message differently and take it as a warning not to enter the woods.