Trailer Analysis; Sorority Row Trailer by Rabia (:

Sorority Row Trailer

Sorority Rows genre is horror and thriller, a hybrid, it was released on the 9^th September 2009. The story is about a group of sorority sisters trying to cover up the death of their house-sister after a prank gone wrong, after graduation they get stalked by a serial killer.

Throughout the trailer, the whole cast are wearing stereotypical American/ Hollywood clothing, which are:  expensive dresses, bikinis at the party. This connotes that the movie is a Hollywood movie and it also shows the protagonists to be women, which is not consistent through Hollywood movies but as the movie goes on the women are seen as weak and vulnerable.  The hairstyles and make-up throughout this trailer are not an everyday wear, this attracts both genders to watch this movie, because they are wearing bikinis showing there sexual side and the make-up attracts the male audience because of the attractive women starring in this movie.

They set this movie in several of different locations such as:  there college, each characters house, in a mining company which looks abandoned, in the reception of some hotel or spa, kitchen and one of the characters garden. When they are in there college, there is a girl that brings up the girl who died, once that is mentioned all of the girls facial expressions drops and they start to look at each other, to connote everyone else in that crowd does not know what happened but them and the audience. After this scene you see all the main protagonists body language is uncomfortable as they are all tense and frightened shown by there facial expressions.

At the beginning of the trailer when they are using fast editing to show the up tempo of the movie and their lifestyles, the lighting is natural but as the movie progresses the lighting comes from filler lights and key lighting, manly high key to make it look realistic. In the houses you see the lighting comes from the lamps around the rooms to also make it more realistic and allow the audience to see as if they are actually in the house. When they are at the mining company you see that the lighting is for the filler light but the direction it is coming from it looks as if it is from the moon. After this scene, the music is parallel to the scene as they are pulling a prank on the boy, to make the scene and to remind the audience it is still a prank. They also, in some scenes, use sound bridges to connote all the scenes are from the same movie and it also connotes the emotions and feeling you will have will stay with you throughout the movie and the audience will not lose interest throughout the movie.

However, when the prank becomes reality the music starts to become fast and the editing as well, they include close-ups of the characters reaction to allow the audience to identify with them. They use back lighting to create suspense and mystery. Throughout, manly they use fade to black to connote everything you are watching is building up to something bad. Then the music is still parallel with the scenes as they are all celebrating there graduation but their facials expressions are contrapuntal to the music. You could also say by having a celebration after connotes the relief of throwing the body, evidence of any dead body away. They use close focus on some of the girls in the ‘sorority group’ to emphasise on the facial expressions and allow the audience to relate to them. They allow the audience to see the man in the hooded gowns from one of the protagonists view and then an extreme close up to her eye to connote her feelings and how she actually feels because she widens her eye to connote shock and a bombshell.

They use both diegetic and non-diegetic sounds to allow the audience to have a feel of some of the movie, by using diegetic. By using non-diegetic allows the audience to have more enigma codes presented to them as the voice over gives some clues in to how they feel and what they are thinking but then it makes the audience think twice about what they are shown and screams to show the audience that they will be screaming throughout the movie and the excitement after.

The different types of camera movements used are: tilt, when they are playing volleyball and also when they look at the girl in the hot tub to show the males perspective and what he is looking at, they also use hand held shots to connote the audience is looking at the rest of the characters by a characters view and finally they use a crane shot to show the whole view of the mining company and what exactly all the characters in that scene are doing. 

By looking at all these aspects of thriller, it allows us to have an understanding of what type of lighting is most common, which is filler lights and back lighting to create suspense and also allows us to create an idea of what we like our trailer to look like, as all these aspects collided allows us to be creative but also keep aspects of thriller and horror in our piece.

By Rabia