Analysis of low budget film trailers

The Blair Witch Project.



This is one of the most successful low budget films. A list of production budget figures have circulated over the years, appearing as low as $20,000. In an interview, Sánchez revealed the truth about the budget. When principal photography first wrapped, approximately $20,000 to $25,000 had been spent. When the directing pair took the film to Sundance, they had to make a print and render a sound mix for the picture, which moved the budget close to $100,000. Before Artisan Entertainment bought the licensing rights they spent an additional "half-million dollars" crafting a new sound mix and reshoots for scenes they wanted changed. Sánchez concludes that the final budget was somewhere between $500,000 and $750,000. The film grossed over $248,639,099 worldwide. This is probably the most successful independent and low budget film of all time. This indicates that the film trailer must have been good to have had such an influence on the target audience.-Analysis of The Blair Witch Project film trailer.

The film trailer defies some of the typical conventions of film trailers. The first example of this would be the length. Typically film trailers last approximately 3 minutes, whereas, this trailer only last forty seconds. This means that barely any of the film footage is shown in order to give the audience a taster of what the film is about, the narrative, the characters, furthermore these scenes also can help to influence the audience to go and see the film, however this trailer has taken a different approach and only shown about two short, under five second clips from the film. Therefore the influential content must come from the music, taglines, reviews and the narrators voice over.The trailer shows three reviews from;- 'Genuinely Frightening' - Newsday- 'One of the creepiest films since the Exorcist' - Entertainment Weekly- 'Scary as Hell' - Rolling StoneThese big name, recognisable companies such as Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone influence the target audience of the film by their reviews, such as One of the creepiest films since the Exorcist'. The Exorcist is a well known, world wide film which has also been voted the scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly. Therefore comparing this film to the film which they believe to be the best horror film of all time influences the audience that it must be good and encourages them to go and see the film.The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl, and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her daughter through an exorcism conducted by two priests. Both the film and novel took inspiration from a documented exorcism in 1949, performed on a fourteen-year-old boy. The film is one of a cycle of 'demonic child' movies produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Rosemary's Baby and The Omen. The film became one of the most profitable horror films of all time, grossing $402,500,000 worldwide. The film earned ten Academy Award nominations—winning two, one for Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay. The Exorcist was commercially released in the United States by Warner Bros. on December 26, 1973, and re-released on March 17, 2000, with a restored version released on September 22, 2000. It was named the scariest movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly and Movies.com and by viewers of AMC in 2006.The main colours of the trailer are black, dark purple, dark blue and grey. These are all dark and dreary colours which connote with death and are the typical colours used in horror films as they create mystery and horror. Most of the four second clips shown are all extremely dark only showing the occasional hand this also creates realism as it is set in a forest at night and so there wouldn’t be any light. This realism could be one of the factors why this film has sold so well as people become immersed in it as it looks like real life and is not packed with special effects and well known stars like Will Smith which highlight the fact that the audience are only watching a film. Also the fact that this film is based on real life story can also encourage people into going to see it as people can become excited and want to know what really happened and what these people experienced.The music over the trailer is also quite slow and creepy, with a woman’s piercing scream over the top.