The Role Of The Distribution

The role of the distributor has a big role to play when they have to try and identify the right target audience for each film.

There are many film comanies who would recieve the film straight from the film production companies such as the big markets Warner Bros. But there are still quite small companies who purchase the films from festivials instead which can be harder to try and sell to the right target audience, such as Lionsgate and Metrodome.

All distributors can get very competitive with trying to promote a certain film. When being set with this task they all take into consideration the key factors, Identifying the target audience, estimating how diverse the film could go and how they are going to plan on competing with other companies and persuading the cinemas to play the film. Before considering how to tackle the target audience, they have to see if they will be able to make a profit from it.


On thing the distributor has to tackle is what the USP is and be very clear on who their target audience is and they need to decide when they are going to release the film as there is a high rating in competion for when other big films will be released.


Their main objective for distributing a film is the advertising process. They do this in many ways such as:


Trailers: When doing the trailer their are two types of trailers. A teaser trailer and a main theaterical trailer. A teaser trailer is the one they release before the main trailer which can contain scenes from the film which don't get used in the proper film. They will also show trailers in the cinema when there is a film which relates to the trailer so the right target audienc is watching.

Billboards: These are big boards which show the poster of the film on them. It shows the release date, title of the film, and the main actors in the film.

Magazines: In most magazines, they have articles about the film and its reviews which helps the distributors get more audience for the film.

Television: During adverts on TV, they would play the trailers, but they may just be teaser ones that they show on TV. On the trailer they give out information such as the website for the film and the release date so that the target audience will research more into it and may go watch it at the cinema.

The differences between a Teaser Trailer and a Main Theatrical Trailer

Teaser Trailer

A teaser trailer is a much shorter trailer which can last under 2 minutes which is advertising an upcoming film. Some teaser trailers are produced before the filnal cut of the film is complete which can contain various small scenes which may not be used in the film. an example of this could be paranormal activity, they placed scenes in the trailer which never got used in the final film. Their called teaser trailers so it can tease the audience to want to watch the full film.

• No longer than 2 minutes.
• In some cases they may not use to much dialogue.
• The scenes are much shorter and quicker
• They use a samll amount of main characters in the scenes

The Main Trailer

The main trailer is on for much longer and contains more scenes and characters in the trailer. They will add more intertitles explain main parts of the film and information which isn't said in the main movie.

• At the end of the trailer it will stop suddenly so you want to watch more of the film
• They use more dialouge so you can understand the narrative of the film more clearer.
• They show the last release date of the film.

I have found examples of a teaser trailer and a full trailer:

Essay on how woman are represented in the horror genre

Carol Clover In men, woman and chainsaws, argues that many horror films are interesting in their representation of gender because they provide a point of identification for a male core target audience. To what extent do you think horror represents gender progressively?

Carol Clover talks about the representation of gender in different ways. She talks about the final girl who is also known as the final protagonist. One of the Stephen King novels she has looked into is carrie. She talks about what her role is in the story, she is shown as a shy, social outsider who becomes the class joke who gets bullied, for such reasons as starting her period. She also mentions that the story is very feminist. She also argues that the processes of identification/objectification going on in many horror texts are much more complicated than the typical 'male gaze'.

Also in different media, woman are represented in other ways. We looked at the classical theoretical view of woman and how they're represented in the media. In the media males and females are usually presented in terms of stereotypes, males are shown to be dominant, strong, active, and independant. But on the other hand females are shown as submissive, passive, sexuality and emotionally. And they're often defined through there relationship with men. Jeremy Tunstall looked into gender representation in the media. He argues that woman in the media are represented as being domestic, sexual, consumer and famuliar. In most films they're shown as being housewives, contented mothers, eager consumers and sex object. In later research they found out that males and females are approximately equal in prime time TV, but males were more likely to be shown having an occupation and they're also shown outdoors more, also males are more likely to be depicted as authorities and females as consumers.

In calss we looked at 3 different horror films to help us understand the different representations of woman. The films we loooked at were Halloween (1978), The Shining (1980) and Eden Lake (2008) The first one we looked at was Halloween where we looked at the female characters and their representation. In Halloween there are

more females than males, the females each have roles in the film. Linda, Annie and Judith Myers are all represented as being sex objects and laurie, baby sitting girl and the nurse are shown as being domestic. We agreed that the roles are very sexist. We also looked into the male gaze. From the roles of each character we can see that the three females who are sex objects are in the male gaze. Laurie isn't part of that gaze because she is shown to be the protagonist who arn't usually sexual, more domestic and maybe a consumer. Again, we see that it's being conservative to the female characters in Halloween. Looking at the narrative we see that more woman die more than men. The percentage would be around 60%:40%, Female:Male. From looking at the figures we decided that it was concervative because more woman die in Halloween due to the fact they are represented as being sex objects.

The second film we looked at was The Shining (1980). In this film

we see that there are more men to woman, 2:1. Wendy has different roles such as being familiar, domestic and a consumer. The reason for her not being a sex object is because she is the final protagonist. The other characters such as bathtub woman are shown as being a sex object because of her being naked in the film and she tries to seduce jake in the room. Again, we see in this film that it's also conservative because the roles are very sexist. The gaze is only presented on the bathtub woman. but it's complicated because she turns into a a corpse which is very confusing. The narrative for this film is that the deaths are equal so this woman seem to be punished for transgression.

The last film we looked at was Eden Lake (2008). The visibility of this film is that men outnumber woman 11-6, which again is conservative.

From some of the female chracters there a different roles. Jenny is familiar and is a teacher so she would be classed as being domestic, and she is the final protagonist. The waitress in the cafe is post related to domestic also, and paige could be classed as being the passive role in the gang. From analysising these roles we can say that the roles are progressive. The only bit of male gaze we see is where jenny is objectified by the gang.. But then we cut to a close up of her and are not identifying with the boys. Also paige refers to objectification as a way of insulting steve. So the gaze in this film is progressive. The narrative of this film is that Jenny is the final protagonist, and woman are not punished for transgretion any more than men, we found this out by doing a death count of both male and female. From analysising the film more we agreed that the narative is progressive because men are treated the same as woman.

3 Horror Trailers Analysising Horror Mise-En-Scene and Technical Code and Trailer Conventions

The reason I have chosen to look into this trailer is because of the use of the flashing images which will be good to use in our own trailer. Which will help create excitement while watching it. I also like the titles during the film they're very creative and would like to try and create our own titles simular to that. Another effective thing is that when the lady is facing forward the little boys face appears from nowhere which is a good way to scare someone. The music which is used helps bring tension to it and i like hit builds up towards the end. I also like the use of extreme close ups, such as when they're talking about the eye and they get close to it which is a good convention in horror films. I also like the way they use big mansions which may or may not be abondoned which give a creepy look at the film and it helps show where the film is set. I also like the part where we see a shot of her on the ceiling which i find really effective, then we see the little boy lying next to her in the bed. I like how its silent with no music and you can't hear her scream which i think is a very powerful way to keep your audience watching, which i hope to try and achieve in my own trailer. At the end of the trailer, i like how they use very quick shots which get you excited to watch and whilst doing the fast shots we get to see close ups of various people and objects and in a horror trailer you usually see the jumping parts at end to make it seem more dramatic. I hope to use this particular technique in my own trailer.



At the start of the trailer i like how it starts of the with equilibrium, and sets the start of teh secene where we can see that we are looking at an abandoned factory/building site. They are also useing dark lighting in the shots to make the scenes more creepy which i will achieve in my own trailer. I also think that the music they have chosen is a very good shoice for this particular film and it works well with various parts of the trailer. I hope to try and find the right music for my own trailer. Throughtout the trailer we see various titles being used, which i will use in my own trailer. I love the way they have created the titles by using red which connotes danger, blood and death. I like the shot were we get an extreme long shot of the villian in the abandoned building in the shadows which is a really good convention for horror, not being able to the the villians face, but we get to see what he looks like at the end of the trailer. Half-way through the trailer we get a song being played which is sung by a little girl, which makes it creepy to watch as children in horror films can be shown as the villian.


The third trailer i have chosen is a film called Woman In Black which is released in 2012. A reason why i chose this trailer to anaylsis is because i love the way they have strange music playing in the background and they use props such as childrens dolls and toys which can have a scary imapct on the viewer. Another reason i like this trailer is because i really like the way they do the shot where she comes out behind him at the window and i feel that it would be a good thing to try out in my own horror movie trailer. The use of rain in the trailer connotes saddness and can also connote death. I also like how the children seem very innocent and are used as being creepy towards the people who come to the house. Its also very common to have an abandoned house in horror movies, this one is particually scary because there are rooms which you can't get into and its very dark at night which is when the woman in black comes to haunt you. Another thing i really like is the titles, they use a very good font for this kind of horror and i would like to try this in my own trailer.

Narrative Theory

Narrative Structure

Vladimir Propp

When we watched The Shining in class we talked about different critics who talk about the different parts to the narrative structure. One of the critics we looked at was Vladimir Propp, who talks about the characters within a film. The character roles he identified are; The Villain, The Hero, The Donor - who provides the object, The helper who aids the hero, The princess - who is usually classed as a final girl in horror films. In the Shining we come across a lot of these characters. The villain we see is Jack when he starts acting strangely and at the end he tries to kill his own family. The helper which aids the hero is Wendy but it could also be Danny. The final girl in the film is Wendy as she tries to fight jack off which works. The hero and victims in this are Wendy and Danny also as they both get injured and both get away and fight the villain.

Claude Levi-Strauss

Another critic we have looked at is Levi-Strauss who looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions. Binary opposition are just opposite values like Good and Evil. But then he looked deeper into different arrangements of themes. For a Horror film such as The Shining the binary oppositions could be Good/Evil and maybe Normal/Strange.

The Return Of The Repressed

According to Freud's theory, the very act of entering into civilized society entails the repression of various desires. Each person's psychosexual development includes the surpassing of previous "love-objects" that are tied to earlier sexual phases (the oral phase, the anal-sadistic phase, etc.) however, even well-adjusted individuals still betray the insistent force of those earlier desires through dreams, literature, or "Freudian slips"; hence the term, "return of the repressed." In less well-adjusted individuals, who remain fixated on objects or who are driven to abnormal reaction-formations or substitute-formations, two possibilities exist, the first one is perversion, in which case the individual completely accepts and pursues his or her desire for alternative sexual objects and situations (sado-masochists, etc.) and the second one is neurosis, in which case the same prohibited desires may still be functioning.

In horror films we see a lot of dreams and imaginations coming true. A repressed memory is the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desire, and action. A lot of people are stuck with these traumatic experiences unless they are rendered unconscious at the time of the experience. No one has identified a single case where a specific traumatic experience in childhood was repressed and the repressed memory of the event, rather than the event itself, caused a specific psychiatric or physical disorder in adulthood.

Horror Trailer

This film trailer has many different conventions of horror involved. Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark is going to be released in 2011, they find out they have monsters which are living in dark areas of the house for years and they come to haunt the people living in the house. At the start of the trailer we get to see the setting and surroundings of the film, we see a huge mansion which is placed in the middle of nowhere. And during the trailer we see that there are many rooms and different vents which is very common in a horror film. We see and unusual large room filled with old junk which gives the impression that this house is quite mysterious, and makes you wonder how old the house really is. The lightening throughout the trailer is very dim and mostly dark which is when the monsters like to mess around with the family, but mainly the little girl.

Another convention which is given is that we get a variation of different camera angles throughout the trailer. An example is where we see a point of view shot of the little girl who helps us get into her character and try and get a reaction out of us, and then a reaction shot to show the terror on her face. We also see a lot of medium shots and close ups which can help the audience which can be unsettling to the viewers as we can’t see most of the surroundings. The sounds which are used in this trailer are quite eerie and sharp. The use many different diegetic sounds such as the door creaking and the soft footsteps of the little girl to make it more effective. They also use a Non- diegetic sound which is the whispers of the monsters throughout the trailer which makes us think about where the monsters actually are.

Also during this trailer they use a variety of different iconography aspects. The first one which I spotted was that they have placed objects in the film to get the audience to believe that this is a horror film, such as, the doll which she loses which can connote innocence of the girl. We also see a tool box which gets knocked over in one of the scenes which is to show the weapons and that they are going to be used. Another thing that we see is that it’s mostly dark throughout the trailer which is used in a lot of horrors, which can connote evil and danger. Also we see a dark, dusty, cold basement which is placed in the trailer which makes us understand that it’s a horror film. In various parts of the trailer we see different shapes of the shadows which make it more mysterious and creepy.

For this trailer the narrative structure which is used is the classic Hollywood narrative as we can tell that there could be a sequel for this film or they will resolve the situation and get rid of the monsters. This theory is based on Todorov’s theories into film structure.


In this trailer we see a variety of different character types, such as the little girl who could maybe be classed as the final girl but they usually use an older woman for that role. But she can be classed as being the main protagonist, as she is the one being haunted by the monsters in the house. We see the married couple who can be classed as being the innocent family and not really knowing what’s going on and doesn’t want to believe the little girl at first. We also have monsters which are hidden in the house and we can see that they have been there for many years.

The theme of this particular horror would have to be the hidden evil inside. Because we see at the start of the trailer that they don’t know that they are there, but during the trailer they start to realise that there is something evil living inside the house.