Personal investigation: Paranormal activity

Paranormal Activity is a 2007 American supernatural horror film which was written and directed by Oren Peli. The plot is centred on a young couple, Katie and Micah, who are hauted by a supernatural presence, evil, in their home, done in the style of “found footage” from a camera which is set up by the couple attempting to catch footage of supernatual occurances.

The film was released in the USA on September 25^th 2009 and nationwide in October 16^th 2009. The film itself earned nearly $108million at the USA box office and $194million worldwide. On the first day of release theaters took $36,146 and $77,873 on its first weekend.

From my personal investigation of this successful horror, I conclude that I believe this horror was only successful because it is advertisement and publicity. From seeing the film myself, I wanted to know the reason why this horror was so successful on a low budget. This connects with the trailer that we are going to make as we to will be making a trailer on a low budget. After looking at the advertisement and merchandise, it concludes that the trailer was what sold the film to the audience. From looking at the trailer for this horror, the key convention of this trailer is the fact that the director has included reaction shots of the audience. The shots of the the audiene and their reactions is a fantastic way to lure the audience in as they don’t see what the storyline line is but they see the effects of the movie. People see the reactions of the audience, and realise how scary it much be and therefore want to go see the movie. I admitt personally I was lured from watching the trailer to this movie from just watching the trailer. I saw the reactions of the audience and from just seeing that I realised this was going to be a scary movie. It was a unique way to lure the audience as I can’t recall another movie doing the same.

I have included a few still shows of the trailer for the paranormal activity, which shows the reactions of the audience. The freeze-frames show exactly how the director has created the trailer. I picked the keys shots and from doing that I realised that they included a lot of shots of facial reactions.