Music

Sound and Music in Psychological Thriller Trailers

Music in our trailer will be vital as it sets the tone for the type of film audiences will be viewing. Often trailers lack dialogue and let the footage entice the audience as it is important to leave viewers wanting more. For instance in the 'Only God Forgives' red band trailer, the trailer begins with a short introduction of dialogue before a simplistic lullaby begins playing. The sounds are staccato and high pitched, and contrast with the heavy, intense footage being show. We liked the idea of contrasting the music to footage to make a disjointed, unnerving aura of our trailer, which is relevant to our genre.

On the other hand the trailer for Danny Boyle's Thriller, 'The Beach' demonstrates how to coincide your music and footage and blend the two together to make a smooth, progressive trailer that has climaxes, and sounds that tell the story. The trailer starts with an introduction of dialogue, a feature that we plan to use in our own trailer. At this point soft, techno music is used to build the tension in the trailer. There are many different soundtracks to the trailer including house-techno style music in faster paced scenes that portray recklessness and the characters being free spirits. This music is cut off by loud bangs, before rippling techno sounds are used once again. This then builds up to an equilibrium when the characters arrive at the beach and the tone is suddenly changed to a more serene atmosphere with slower cuts and a well known piece of music 'Porcelain' by Moby. The chilled music is used to accompany scenic shots of the titular 'Beach' . This upbeat, feel-good piece of music is tactically used to make the trailer memorable, but also to then contrast with the next sequence of footage that is more associated with the thriller genre. The music is cut off by a crash of thunder and then several conventional sounds of a thriller are used liked gun shots, loud bangs and screeching string music. The music then climaxes into a piece that is reminiscent of a continuous heartbeat to keep the tension of a thriller.