The initial film trailer for the film "The Orphan" begins by introducing the audience to the protagonist family who intend to adopt a child this is Esther. Towards the middle of the film trailer the audience begin to find out that this child is troubled, and there is something unconventional in the way that she acts. At the climax, a visual montage is inserted into the trailer of the different types of torment that Esther puts the family through. The structure allows the audience to see what the general narrative of the film is about, but doesn’t give too much away which allows the audience to remain intrigued. For example, we see the other children in the film being used to the horror of the mother, e.g. when the youngest girl gets pushed in front of the car. This sets up the audience into wondering what happens to her and also the building enigma of what is wrong with Esther.
In my opinion, the genre and sub-genre (Psychological Horror) of the film that is being promoted is made clear around the middle of the trailer, beginning with the crane shot of Esther being violent in the school toilets. This is then when the audience begin to realise that she is not just being violent in response to petty bullying but instead something deeper is wrong, to which the audiences assumptions are confirmed in the text "I think there is something wrong with Esther". The text is in black on a faded white background, both colour connoting to good and evil, common themes in horror and following the narrative theory of binary opposites by Claude Levi Strauss. It is conventional for horrors to include young, vulnerable girls, and also to use orphans, therefore by placing both of these character conventions into one character, the negative stigma is doubled and the audiences emotional response much more varied. It is implied that by being an orphan, Esther did not have a very good upbringing, causing almost a sense of pity and a relationship based on this to form between the audience and the character, parallel to the relationship forming between the characters. This creates a synthetic emotional roller coaster for audience members who can relate to a small dose of the emotions that the adoptive mother is acting out on screen.
Other codes and conventions are used such as the typical locations for horror films, for example, two different types of schools, a big house in an isolated setting. There are also some that relate predominantly to the sub-genre conventions, e.g. a hospital and an orphanage. Another horror genre convention that can be seen is the types of characters that are being victimised in the film. These are, a female mother figure and the other children in the family. This can be applied to the narrative theory by Vladimir Propps who suggested that there are certain roles included in films. The idea that the female and children are used reinforces the reactionary view of female weakness and likability to children. Conventional sound is also used such as screams, high pitched sounds, etc. It is also notable that there are no deaths shown on screen and the antagonist appears, at first to be normal.
It is common place in horror movies for the mood and the target audiences understanding of the film through the trailer, to be created through mise-en-scene elements. Locations and sets in this trailer appear to be used throughout this trailer to create a realistic approach to the plot, enabling the audience to relate to it and therefore, being a horror, make them feel more scared. This is because the audience are able to picture themselves in this situation and would therefore be more thrilling and un-nerving. In one scene in the park, where Esther spots the girl that bullied her about the way she dressed, Ether can be seen following the girl up to the top of one of the play instruments where she appears to push her off. A long , low angle tilted up shot is then shown of Esther at the top, looking powerful and giving the sense that she felt it was her kingdom. This is also added to be the use of other mise-en-scene elements used in the scene. Esther wear a dark, old-fashioned costume and the shape of her hat gives connotations of a witch-like appearance that immediately leads us to see her as evil, sinister and dangerous.
When looking at lighting and colours that are used throughout this trailer it is notable that there is a gradual change from the beginning to the end, representing the change in the life of the family over the time from adopting Esther to the end. At the start of the film trailer, there is an overriding use of bright colours and use of ambient lighting, e.g. when Esther is painting, there are a lot of colours on the page. Then, at the pivotal scene where Esther is in the toilet, kicking and screaming, the lighting and colours slowly start to decrease in brightness, exposure and saturation. On the whole, they appear to become darker and a blue tinge is present. From here on, the lighting and colours used become progressively darker, to the point where sometimes the effect is almost black and white. This could suggest the contrast of characters, the black representing the evil inside Esther, and the white representing the innocence of the other children and the mother in the film. Skies become grey and stay that way until the trailer ends which creates a gloomy and evil atmosphere. The use of fire in the film trailer also suggests evil as fire is a symbol from ‘hell’. Lightning is used in the scene where Esther is standing over her ‘step sister’s’ bed whilst she sleeps. This again creates a sense of evil and a villain like feeling, and we can then tell that something is going to happen.
At the beginning of the trailer, facial expressions and body language represent the calm and happy mood. All the characters are smiling, the mother and father have welcoming eyes, and all the children, even Esther, have soft faces, representing the innocence of children in general. As the trailer continues, body language becomes more closed, facial expressions give off a stronger sense of worry or fear, asynchronous to the audience's view on the character of Esther beginning to change. One of Esther's character motifs becomes her evil stares, smiles, implying that there is something disturbing going on. The scene where Esther is in the toilet, her facial expressions and body language is angry and violent which reflects her character.
In this film trailer, the combination of diegetic and non diegetic Sound is used to create fear, excitement and anticipation for the audience. Diegetic sound is used to help aid the target audience’s understanding of the narrative and increase the effect of tension builds. For example, towards the middle of the trailer, when our understanding of the narrative should become more detailed and clear, we hear the mother’s voice say “I think there is something wrong with Esther”. Immediately, the target audience are aware that something bad is going to happen and that Esther isn’t the child that matched the assumptions they first drew from her. During the climax of the trailer, dialogue becomes mainly screams and shouting e.g. the mother on numerous occasions shouts out “What did you do!” “What are you doing?!” and so on. Esther’s scream, on the other hand, connotes to "spine chilling" signals of her disturbed mental state, again confirming that there is ‘something wrong’ with this child. Ambient sound is also used to enhance the idea of it being a realistic approach e.g. the school bell, the sound of a car engine.
Non Diegetic Sound has been used in this trailer to create a sense of fear and suspense. It is the suspense in horror movies that appears to be the thing that most attracts the target audience, closely followed by a liking of the adrenaline that follows being scared in the film. Therefore, it is essential that these be the main features that scoring the trailer aimed to achieve. At the start of the trailer, a light melody is being played on a piano which contradicts the genre of the film, then the music becomes more eerie and the tempo builds up which suggests to the target audience that the action/ horror is about to take place. During the climax of the trailer, there is a sharp beat that gradually gets louder and louder, which builds suspense, also seeming to match to the sound of a heartbeat. This could be used as a mimic of the increase in the audience’s heartbeat as their anticipation levels grow. A child singing is used at the end of the trailer as part of the sting which leaves the audience with the sense of creepiness in reflection to the trailer.
By the use of some of the integrated textual clips, it is made clear to the audience that the narrative has shifted to a completely different direction than was anticipated by the characters within the film. It is used to initially split up the idealic action from the beginning of the downward spiral, and form then on it is used to separate out the different levels of increasingly disturbing behaviour. Similarly, the speed of editing begins slowly before gradually becoming faster and faster. This type of editing, also contributes to the building up of tensions and creation of suspense alongside all of the other factors involved. A clear understanding of the basic narrative is established in the slow editing of the initial scenes, then as the speed builds up more and more on the action scenes, it prepares the audience for a final burst of action at the end. One of the common transition effect used is the fade to black and then in, tending to represent the non- continuity convention of film trailers. In this genre, it could also be argued that it is used to create an erratic sense of terror that complements the action on screen. For example, towards the end of this "Orphan" trailer, there is a fast climax of pieces of footage that are being used, from different parts of the scene, and different forms of torment are presented. This could also reflect Esther’s violent mind, as the shots appear to be looking at the action through her POV, with the fade to black transitions symbolising her eyes, blinking as she watches the terror and torment she has caused. A shallow focus is used in the trailer where the park swings are swinging back and forth; creating an unclear, blissful moment that the audience have previously been taught to fear due to the storm that follows in other movies within the genre. An eye line match is used in the scene in the classroom, where another student is commenting on the way that Esther is dressed. The reaction shot from Esther follows, where instead of looking upset, like any normal young girl would, she has the look of evil in her eyes.
Within the trailer, there is a huge contrast in the representations of children, with Esther represented as a demonic child whilst the other children in the family are perceived as quiet, innocent and almost angelic. There is also a divide between the costumes of the school children and the costumes of Esther, where she wears old fashion dresses, they wear jeans and t-shirts, setting a modern day setting through the clothes being used to represent the 21st century. The paleness of Esther's skin against her hair, appears almost unhealthily ghostly, representing her as abnormal right from the start, although this is for the most part ignored by the audience due to the over riding emotion of pity at that point. There is also a negative representation of orphans in general, possibly creating or enhancing an unfair stigma over real orphans. This runs parallel to the representation of women and children as vulnerable on the whole , disregarding that Esther is a child herself.
In my opinion, the genre and sub-genre (Psychological Horror) of the film that is being promoted is made clear around the middle of the trailer, beginning with the crane shot of Esther being violent in the school toilets. This is then when the audience begin to realise that she is not just being violent in response to petty bullying but instead something deeper is wrong, to which the audiences assumptions are confirmed in the text "I think there is something wrong with Esther". The text is in black on a faded white background, both colour connoting to good and evil, common themes in horror and following the narrative theory of binary opposites by Claude Levi Strauss. It is conventional for horrors to include young, vulnerable girls, and also to use orphans, therefore by placing both of these character conventions into one character, the negative stigma is doubled and the audiences emotional response much more varied. It is implied that by being an orphan, Esther did not have a very good upbringing, causing almost a sense of pity and a relationship based on this to form between the audience and the character, parallel to the relationship forming between the characters. This creates a synthetic emotional roller coaster for audience members who can relate to a small dose of the emotions that the adoptive mother is acting out on screen.
Other codes and conventions are used such as the typical locations for horror films, for example, two different types of schools, a big house in an isolated setting. There are also some that relate predominantly to the sub-genre conventions, e.g. a hospital and an orphanage. Another horror genre convention that can be seen is the types of characters that are being victimised in the film. These are, a female mother figure and the other children in the family. This can be applied to the narrative theory by Vladimir Propps who suggested that there are certain roles included in films. The idea that the female and children are used reinforces the reactionary view of female weakness and likability to children. Conventional sound is also used such as screams, high pitched sounds, etc. It is also notable that there are no deaths shown on screen and the antagonist appears, at first to be normal.
It is common place in horror movies for the mood and the target audiences understanding of the film through the trailer, to be created through mise-en-scene elements. Locations and sets in this trailer appear to be used throughout this trailer to create a realistic approach to the plot, enabling the audience to relate to it and therefore, being a horror, make them feel more scared. This is because the audience are able to picture themselves in this situation and would therefore be more thrilling and un-nerving. In one scene in the park, where Esther spots the girl that bullied her about the way she dressed, Ether can be seen following the girl up to the top of one of the play instruments where she appears to push her off. A long , low angle tilted up shot is then shown of Esther at the top, looking powerful and giving the sense that she felt it was her kingdom. This is also added to be the use of other mise-en-scene elements used in the scene. Esther wear a dark, old-fashioned costume and the shape of her hat gives connotations of a witch-like appearance that immediately leads us to see her as evil, sinister and dangerous.
When looking at lighting and colours that are used throughout this trailer it is notable that there is a gradual change from the beginning to the end, representing the change in the life of the family over the time from adopting Esther to the end. At the start of the film trailer, there is an overriding use of bright colours and use of ambient lighting, e.g. when Esther is painting, there are a lot of colours on the page. Then, at the pivotal scene where Esther is in the toilet, kicking and screaming, the lighting and colours slowly start to decrease in brightness, exposure and saturation. On the whole, they appear to become darker and a blue tinge is present. From here on, the lighting and colours used become progressively darker, to the point where sometimes the effect is almost black and white. This could suggest the contrast of characters, the black representing the evil inside Esther, and the white representing the innocence of the other children and the mother in the film. Skies become grey and stay that way until the trailer ends which creates a gloomy and evil atmosphere. The use of fire in the film trailer also suggests evil as fire is a symbol from ‘hell’. Lightning is used in the scene where Esther is standing over her ‘step sister’s’ bed whilst she sleeps. This again creates a sense of evil and a villain like feeling, and we can then tell that something is going to happen.
At the beginning of the trailer, facial expressions and body language represent the calm and happy mood. All the characters are smiling, the mother and father have welcoming eyes, and all the children, even Esther, have soft faces, representing the innocence of children in general. As the trailer continues, body language becomes more closed, facial expressions give off a stronger sense of worry or fear, asynchronous to the audience's view on the character of Esther beginning to change. One of Esther's character motifs becomes her evil stares, smiles, implying that there is something disturbing going on. The scene where Esther is in the toilet, her facial expressions and body language is angry and violent which reflects her character.
In this film trailer, the combination of diegetic and non diegetic Sound is used to create fear, excitement and anticipation for the audience. Diegetic sound is used to help aid the target audience’s understanding of the narrative and increase the effect of tension builds. For example, towards the middle of the trailer, when our understanding of the narrative should become more detailed and clear, we hear the mother’s voice say “I think there is something wrong with Esther”. Immediately, the target audience are aware that something bad is going to happen and that Esther isn’t the child that matched the assumptions they first drew from her. During the climax of the trailer, dialogue becomes mainly screams and shouting e.g. the mother on numerous occasions shouts out “What did you do!” “What are you doing?!” and so on. Esther’s scream, on the other hand, connotes to "spine chilling" signals of her disturbed mental state, again confirming that there is ‘something wrong’ with this child. Ambient sound is also used to enhance the idea of it being a realistic approach e.g. the school bell, the sound of a car engine.
Non Diegetic Sound has been used in this trailer to create a sense of fear and suspense. It is the suspense in horror movies that appears to be the thing that most attracts the target audience, closely followed by a liking of the adrenaline that follows being scared in the film. Therefore, it is essential that these be the main features that scoring the trailer aimed to achieve. At the start of the trailer, a light melody is being played on a piano which contradicts the genre of the film, then the music becomes more eerie and the tempo builds up which suggests to the target audience that the action/ horror is about to take place. During the climax of the trailer, there is a sharp beat that gradually gets louder and louder, which builds suspense, also seeming to match to the sound of a heartbeat. This could be used as a mimic of the increase in the audience’s heartbeat as their anticipation levels grow. A child singing is used at the end of the trailer as part of the sting which leaves the audience with the sense of creepiness in reflection to the trailer.
By the use of some of the integrated textual clips, it is made clear to the audience that the narrative has shifted to a completely different direction than was anticipated by the characters within the film. It is used to initially split up the idealic action from the beginning of the downward spiral, and form then on it is used to separate out the different levels of increasingly disturbing behaviour. Similarly, the speed of editing begins slowly before gradually becoming faster and faster. This type of editing, also contributes to the building up of tensions and creation of suspense alongside all of the other factors involved. A clear understanding of the basic narrative is established in the slow editing of the initial scenes, then as the speed builds up more and more on the action scenes, it prepares the audience for a final burst of action at the end. One of the common transition effect used is the fade to black and then in, tending to represent the non- continuity convention of film trailers. In this genre, it could also be argued that it is used to create an erratic sense of terror that complements the action on screen. For example, towards the end of this "Orphan" trailer, there is a fast climax of pieces of footage that are being used, from different parts of the scene, and different forms of torment are presented. This could also reflect Esther’s violent mind, as the shots appear to be looking at the action through her POV, with the fade to black transitions symbolising her eyes, blinking as she watches the terror and torment she has caused. A shallow focus is used in the trailer where the park swings are swinging back and forth; creating an unclear, blissful moment that the audience have previously been taught to fear due to the storm that follows in other movies within the genre. An eye line match is used in the scene in the classroom, where another student is commenting on the way that Esther is dressed. The reaction shot from Esther follows, where instead of looking upset, like any normal young girl would, she has the look of evil in her eyes.
Within the trailer, there is a huge contrast in the representations of children, with Esther represented as a demonic child whilst the other children in the family are perceived as quiet, innocent and almost angelic. There is also a divide between the costumes of the school children and the costumes of Esther, where she wears old fashion dresses, they wear jeans and t-shirts, setting a modern day setting through the clothes being used to represent the 21st century. The paleness of Esther's skin against her hair, appears almost unhealthily ghostly, representing her as abnormal right from the start, although this is for the most part ignored by the audience due to the over riding emotion of pity at that point. There is also a negative representation of orphans in general, possibly creating or enhancing an unfair stigma over real orphans. This runs parallel to the representation of women and children as vulnerable on the whole , disregarding that Esther is a child herself.