Carrie Trailer Overview

Carrie

A 1976 American Psychological Thriller film based on the novel by Stephen King

Directed by Brian De Palma

The plot is focused on Carrie (Sissy Spacek), a socially outcast teenage girl who suffers constant abuse from her religious mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie), and classmates

Carrie discovers early in the story that she possesses the ability to move objects through the power of her mind that are especially apparent when she is angry or distressed

She is invited to prom by classmate Tommy Ross and there she becomes a victim of one her classmates pranks and seeks to take revenge on the whole student body

Inspiration:
We can take some inspiration from ‘Carrie’ as the red is a symbolic colour throughout the film which is something that we wish to include in our film trailer to signify danger and strong emotions

Furthermore, we want to include a motif for our main character that leads her to becoming a ‘catfish’. This could be shots of our main character being bullied and wanting to take revenge on the bullies, or just the fact that she suffers from psychological issues

Carrie also opens with a state of equilibrium which is something that we would want to include in our film opening. However, unlike Carrie, we would elongate this state of equilibrium to mislead our audience and then interrupt this equilibrium.

Brian De Palma:

De Palma’s film can fall into two categories and one of these is Psychological Thrillers (Sisters, Dressed to Kill, Obsession, Blow Out, Raising Cain) which is what we are hoping to produce.

Film critics have often noted De Palma’s use of unusual camera angles. For example, he often frames characters against the background using a canted angle shot and he has used split screen shots have been used to show two events happening simultaneously. In addition, in order to create suspense, De Palma has used 360 degree camera pan. Slow sweeping, panning and tracking shots are often used in his films. Slow motion is also a shot frequently used by De Palma to increase tension.

We can draw inspiration of Brain De Palma as we want to use unusual and distorted camera shots to make the audience feel uncomfortable and ‘on edge’ when watching our film trailer.