Explore your use of sound.

Our use of sound is conventional of horror films, its eerie and creepy and acts as an immediate genre indicator for audiences. We decided to get one of our group members to sing the 'teddy bears picnic', we also recorded her humming the tune to see which one was more effective. When Hannah was singing it see made it sound like it was a child singing along, this helps make it more tense because children are associated with innocence whereas when they are put in horror films its becomes more creepy because they are usually these sweet dependant people. Not only is this nursery rhyme well known so people would be able to recognise this and associate this with our film, helping to create a brand identity, but it also links to the location. Overall this bit of sound was conventional to the genre because its eerie and foreshadows future events about how its not safe to go to the woods alone.
This use of song is very similar to the trailer for the film 'Carrie' because this starts with a women singing over the top of the trailer, diegetic sound because the audience are introduced to the source of the sound. This singing is broken up by screaming but despite the screaming happening the singing remains very calm, helping to build tension because the viewer is very unsettled and does not know who to trust. We really liked the idea of the calm singing to stay constant throughout despite the drama that is unfolding on screen.
Also at the beginning of our trailer we had a voice over of one of the victims friends talking about the events that had taken place, this helped to briefly introduce the audience to the story giving them some background information. The voice over also helped the audience become more connected to the victim before they had even been introduced to her. Although voice over is a subversion to the usual horror film, dialogue is often used at the beginning instead. For example in the trailer for the 'Conjuring' dialogue is used on its own without any non-diegetic music to allow the audience to focus on what was being said. By doing this it helps to emphasise any strange noises, or any non-diegetic sound when it does eventually get introduced, this helped us in the timings of our sound to create the best effect.
The non-diegetic sound in our trailer is very similar to that in 'Nightmare on Elm Street' because they have children singing in that as well to help build tension. We thought this was a good idea and created a very tense atmosphere which was an effect that we also desired to create. The song in our trailer links to our location and suggests that the woods is an unsafe place to be, this also helps with enigma code as it leaves the audience with questions about the woods and if the victim ever does return.