Enigmas, editing and camera

Zara

What is an enigma?

An enigma is either a person or a form of object that carries a mysterious element that one tries to figure out what it means. This leaves the audience in a state of questions on what is going on in the film and how it is going to end. Leaving such enigmas makes it more likely for the audience to go and with the film as they are curious in what is going to happen. An example of this is a riddle or a paradox.

UnfriendedIn the trailer Unfriended, the enigma of this film is who uploaded the video and why is girl who is haunting her friends attacking them when it may have been someone else? The only way of finding out why this is going to happen is to watch the entire film and find out why this is occurring. Missing elements that have been left are who is going to die, how they are going to die and who will survive? That is the main question on the audiences minds because the genre is a horror therefore it is likely that someone is going to be killed in the film. Moreover, the trailer created anticipation by counting down the amount of people left and who is going to die first in some sort of order. The audience will want to know who will go first and how; in which the countdown showed how each person was almost going to die but cuts off to the next countdown to cause the audience to wonder what happened to them.

Reviews and AccoladesThe reviews and accolades are where different media industries give their opinion on what the film is like and rate it out of 5 stars. If the film has been told it is really good and is given 5 stars, it is more likely that the target audience will go and watch it in the cinema. In the trailer, these reviews are shown at the same time the anticipation, and tension starts to build up in the trailer there fore no voiceover is needed to announced the reviews as it could ruin the atmosphere that the audience is experiencing. It is edited to be fast paced to get the audience to know how scary the film is, and what others think of it so the audience will think that it is worth being seen in the cinema.

EditingThroughout the trailer, it is mainly fast paced editing that created the most suspense and drama, screaming and shouting also creates tension because it creates a sense of panic within the audience to make them feel this way. The entire film is based on a video chat which makes it seem quite different in the horror genre because it creates more confined spaces so the audience doesn’t know what is happening around the characters except for the fact that the characters can be seen on the screen. Also, because it is based on a video chat, it is likely for the internet to freeze which freezes the video chat for some people. The use of this means that when the person is being attacked, it glitches; not fully showing what is happening to them, but only showing parts of how they are being killed. This contributes to the fast paced editing as glitches are quick but also freezes to show a screenshot of the victim during which makes the audience feel uncomfortable. Therefore being a good convention of the Horror genre.

Camera and LightingThere haven’t been a lot of camera angles and movements within the film except for the fact that the webcam represents a mini screen that contains these angles and changes. It is mainly the usage of close ups and long close ups because the characters are looking though a webcam on their laptops to speak to each other and that the scenes are mostly, or all based around these areas. The lighting used is artificial light because it can be seen that it is based within each characters homes and it the background of each camera, a light or a lamp can be seen. However, when the ‘’glitch’’ in the trailer says lights out, the only light that can be seen is the light coming from the computer screen. All that was once around them cannot be seen due to the confined camera angle of the webcam.