Friday, 18 December 2009

RESEARCH AND PLANNING - Nightmare on Elm Street the original trailer


I am now analysing the original trailer to the 1984 original version of Nightmare on Elm Street. I have compared and contrasted the similarities and differences between this trailer and the new remake which is being released in 2010. From this we can see how the trailer grabs the audiences attention in different ways, and the techniques used to keep the present audience interested and even more scared, even though they may already have seen the original.

The trailer starts with the production company flickering on the screen, which immediately tells the audience that this trailer may be scary, and a horror genre. The first clip is of young girls playing with skipping ropes in the street. The music starts of high, then descends down, creating anticipation. There is a voiceover narrating to the audience what is about to happen to ‘the kids in Elm Street.’ There are then clips of the individual teenagers encountering Freddie Kruger as he murders them one by one, through this group of friends. The music changes to futuristic type theme, as the police are trying to solve this mystery of murders. A the main victim, falls asleep in the bath we see Freddie’s gloved hand with knives on the end creep up through her legs, ready to get her, but then she wakes up. From a birds eye view shot of the girl in the bath the title of the film appears on screen. It fills most of the screen, with ‘A Nightmare’ written in red, capital letters, and ‘On Elm Street’ in smaller white letters. This shows that Elm Street is the innocent area, which is being haunted by the nightmare of Freddie Kruger. We see a glimpse of Freddie jumping out of a mirror, in his famous red and black stripped sweater. The new trailer also showed this iconic jumper, which represents the character and his deathly danger.

We see his gloved hand with long knives scrapping along a pipe. This shot is also remade in the new 2010 trailer. We also see the silhouette of Freddie with his very long, extended arms in the darkness. The use of close up show the characters scared emotions and reactions to the actions happening. The narrator says ‘no one will survive.’ There is then a close up of Freddie Kruger as we see his eyes, from hiding behind an object. We are then exposed to his whole body as he attacks the girl. There are more clips of the girl screaming as Freddie comes to get her, then there is a fade to black and the title of the film again appears, with the people who wrote, directed and produced the film.
Here is the link to this trailer on YouTube:

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