Research

 
Well...

 -         According to an article by Filminfos, watching movies is one of the most popular hobbies of people worldwide (next to sleeping and eating).

-        Watching different types of films could present ideas to you about the current situations that are happening around you. With these situations, you could also gain knowledge; in fact, you could even use these things you see from the films for any school work or research.

-          Many people find that watching films help them relax and take their mind off current problems, and focus on someone else’s life (the characters’ lives.)

-        Films allow people to problem solve and use their brain from engaging with the film to work out how to resolve the disruption of equilibrium. Todorov believes that all films have the same structure to them. This is called his narrative theory: 

   This is how people like the structure of their films to be, although the disruption of the equilibrium can be disturbing to the audience, there is a much more relaxing feeling at the end of the film when the 'new equilibrium' has happened. Sometimes, films are left without a new equilibrium, and the problem still exists, however, the audience then get more excited about a possible follow-up film and look forward to finding out what the new equilibrium will be, as they know there will be one.

-        It also allows people to find a common ground to have discussions, and conversations with other people of their types, or try to introduce people to new genres of movies.

And what is a film trailer?

Trailers consist of a series selected shots from the film being advertised. Since the purpose of the trailer is to attract an audience to the film, these excerpts are usually drawn from the most exciting, funny, or 'noteworthy' parts of the film but in abbreviated form and usually with some spoilers. For this purpose the scenes are not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the film. A trailer has to achieve that in less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the maximum length allowed by the MPAA. Each studio or distributor is allowed to exceed this time limit once a year, if they feel it is necessary for a particular film.

Some trailers use "special shoot" footage, which is material that has been created specifically for advertising purposes and does not appear in the actual film. A film that is known to use this technique was Terminator 2: Judgment Day, whose trailer featured an elaborate special effect scene of a T-800 Terminator being assembled in a factory that was never intended to be in the film itself. Dimension Films also shot extra scenes for their 2006 horror remake, Black Christmas - these scenes were used in promotional footage for the film, but are similarly absent from the theatrical release. A trailer for the 2002 blockbuster Spider-Man had an entire action sequence especially constructed that involved escaping bank robbers in a helicopter getting caught in a giant web between the World Trade Center's two towers. However, after the September 11 attacks the studio pulled it from theatres.

 

One of the most famous "special shoot" trailers is that used for the 1960s thriller Psycho, which featured director Alfred Hitchcock giving viewers a guided tour of the Bates Motel, eventually arriving at the infamous shower. At this point, the soft-spoken Hitchcock suddenly throws the shower curtain back to reveal Vera Miles with a blood-curdling scream. As the trailer, in fact, was made after completion of the film when Janet Leigh was no longer available for filming, Hitchcock had Miles don a blonde wig for the fleeting sequence. Since the title, "Psycho", instantly covers most of the screen, the switch went unnoticed by audiences for years until freeze-frame analysis clearly revealed that it was Vera Miles and not Janet Leigh in the shower during the trailer.

There are many companies that specialize in the creation of film trailers in Los Angeles and New York. The trailer may be created at agencies (such as The Cimarron Group, MOJO, The Ant Farm, Ben Cain, Aspect Ratio, Flyer Entertainment, Trailer Park, Buddha Jones) while the film itself is being cut together at the studio. Since the edited film does not exist at this point, the trailer editors work from rushes or dailies. Thus, the trailer may contain footage that is not in the final movie, or the trailer editor and the film editor may use different takes of a particular shot. Another common technique is including music on the trailer which does not appear on the film's soundtrack. This is nearly always a requirement, as trailers and teasers are created long before the composer has even been hired for the film score—sometimes as much as a year ahead of the movie's release date—while composers are usually the last creative people to work on the film.

Theorists

Now I know that I am going to create a horror film trailer, I have done extra research into the theorists that talk about the psychology of horror films on their audiences.

A very helpful article on: http://socyberty.com/psychology/the-psychology-of-horror/ tells us why people enjoy the scared feeling that they get when watching horror films.
This article talks about how fictional horror films play with our real fears and passed experiences. They also toy with our individual differences and beliefs.
It states that different people will find different things scary, some horror films may not be scary to us at all, but scare others. The most extreme emotion for being scared is called 'fear' and when the horror film has allowed itself to get into your head, it plays with this emotion.

I also watched a short video from the website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00bf530. This video was very helpful and talks about the very old film, 'The Cat People', made by Val Lewton, head of the Horror unit at RKO. He talks about RKO finding out that when he was creating this film, it didn't matter that he had a very low budget, as in horror films, 'less is more'. He found out that it is very easy to create shock-jumps just by the element f suspense. This video shows a scene in which includes the woman walking down the street, and then running, looking behind her and then forward again as she does so, it is very quiet and then suddenly, a bus pulls up next to her, causing the audience to jump. This false scare of something loud that is non-threatening proved to be very effective and is still used. It is also now used as the 'Lewton Bus' because it was a Luton bus which pulled up next to her and caused the shock and Lewton created it.   

Please view my Prezi for the rest of my research: (View full-screen)