28 Days Later Analysis

I the trailer techniques are used to reflect the genre, horror, for example if we look at the editing, there are lots of short clips one after the other, the fast pace of the short cuts adds the feeling of panic, danger and urgency. Strait away the audience knows from this that the film is going to be an intense horror film.

The transitions used in this trailer are mostly fades to cuts to black; the only other fade used is where the picture folded in to the middle of the screen. The transitions in the beginning of the trailer, before we know anything about the film, are cuts to black; this is because here the shots are very fast and short. The fade into black transitions are used when the cuts are longer, this is because it is not an intense part of the trailer.

Dialogue such as “you never go anywhere alone unless you’ve got no choice” and “only travel in day light” gives the audience little information to go on, this will make them curious and leaves them with questions. These two quotes are clear representations of the trailers genre, because horrors are supposed to be scary and typically people are more afraid on their own and especially in the dark.

To tell the audience that the film will be about humans that are turning into undead zombie like creatures, a few extracts are included in the trailer such as “Infected! Infected with what!?” and “There’s something in the blood”. The fact that it is a zombie film tells us that it is horror.

The sound effects in the trailer are important to portray the genre. Some of the sound effects included are distorted radio sounds, explosions and alarms/sirens. The distorted radio shows that they are alone and isolated because that have lack of contact. The explosions and alarms/sirens show danger and panic.

In the fast pace parts of the trailer there is fast electronic music to match the intensity. However near the end we have very slow and soft music before returning to the electronic music as the trailer ends.

The close up shots show us the expression of the characters in the trailer. We see close ups of the people panicking, hiding, looking scared and we also see some close ups of the infected people too. The close ups of the people show the audience how the characters feel and how they are put in danger and are fighting for their survival. The close up of the infected persons face shows their lack of emotion, they are not smiling or looking angry or sad, they are emotionless monsters that through their emotion do not look human any more.

Long shots are used to show the difference between the infected and non-infected characters typically by the undeads stiff movements and their messy and bloody appearance as apposed to the humans fast and smoother movements. We see with a lot of the long shots, the characters are running away from danger.

To see the effects that the outbreak has had on the world, wide shots are used showing the empty streets and all the destruction that the infection has caused. We can see from these shots that there are not many people left; we assume that they are dead. The destruction, lack of life and debris shows us that the genre is horror by portraying it in an apocalypse.

The lighting in this trailer is dark or has red filters or lights. The reason it dark in most of the trailer is because they are outside at night time or inside without any lights, the fact that it is dark and it is night time makes the scene more scary because its not so much what you can see on screen but what you can’t because it/they are concealed by the darkness. The red lighting is from explosions and the red filters add a sense of danger.

The costumes used were hospital gowns and scrubs for the male character we see, body armor, helmets, guns and for the zombie we see at the end their eyes are red. By these costumes we can see who is a threat and what measures people have resorted to in this end of the world/ apocalypse scenario to keep themselves safe and alive, hence the guns and body armor.

For the settings in the trailer we see that the streets are bare with no people in sight, paper and litter all over the floor and cars tipped over and so on. Of that part of the trailer the shots are quite long to show the amount of debris and to show how everyone has seemed to disappear this adds a mysterious and scary feel.

We see the difference from the living and the undead in the movement in this trailer; the undead have very twitchy movements. The people in this trailer are mostly running, panting or hiding and their strongest emotion shown is fear. This tells the audience through the characters actions and emotions that the film is a horror.