The Trailer for the film ‘The Ring’ is another trailer that uses a large amount of Thriller conventions. Analysing it, I can see that these conventions allow the trailer to form a scary horrific atmosphere for the audience.
Here is a brief study of the trailer and the thriller conventions that it uses.
The trailer shows that the film has many false paths and clues in it, there is a little boy who could be a semi-protagonist to the plot, who draws pictures of where the protagonist is hidden. This follows the convention that there will be a complex narrative structure.
The trailer has a crime at the core of the narrative which is murder. The protagonists watch a film and then receive a call saying that they will die in seven days. This crime is the main narrative for the film, but it is kept in suspense by the clever use of enigmas and plot twists.
There are many enigmas in the trailer which tie into another thriller convention, for example:
- How does the phone know to ring you?
- How does it kill the protagonists?
- Who is the antagonist?
- How does the little boy know?
- What will actually happen to the viewers?
- Will the protagonist survive?
These enigmas are used to keep the audience gripped and to maintain their interest throughout the trailer and also throughout the film as a whole.
Another convention that the trailer follows is that it has a protagonist that is drawn into a complex web of intrigue by the antagonist. The central protagonist is a journalist by profession and her niece is killed by the tape, she wants to research into how the tape is killing people and how she can stop it. The complex web of intrigue is heightened by the fact that we want the protagonist to solve the enigma and to survive.
The trailer follows the conventions of an extraordinary event happening in an ordinary situation because essentially all that is happening is that people are watching a video. The extraordinary event evolves from the ordinary situation and thus the plot thickens.
We are not made aware of any flaws of the protagonist in the trailer for the film as this would give away too much detail and people wouldn’t be willing to go and see the film if they knew what happened in it. The same can be also said for the conventions of themes of identity as we do not find out much about the characters in the trailer.
There are slight themes of mirroring in the trailer as we are shown that other people have been in the situation before and there are protagonists working together to try and work out what is happening. These themes of mirroring show the audience that there is more than one person in the situation which makes them feel as though they could be there and that they could play a part.
The titles of the trailer follow conventions because they relate to the plot and to the antagonists psychological state. The titles show a ring with white writing on a contrasting black background, the ring is black with portrays the bottom of the well which you cannot see into.
This analysis is a short insight into the conventions used in the thriller trailer of The Ring. The Ring does not use every convention as it could give away too much of the plot for the audience, the conventions allow the viewer to be gripped in suspense which persuades them to see the film.
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