Film trailers are considered the most important marketing tool for a feature film; however, they have rarely been discussed in audience research. This article examines audiences’ emotional responses to film trailer content based on an exploratory study using skin conductance to measure emotional arousal as well as self-reports on recall, evaluation and the desire to see the film. The results indicate that it is not the overall level of arousal that is likely to affect these factors, but instead a specific pattern of arousal that allows variation and build-up to memorable scenes. Based on the analysis of four drama film trailers, we suggest that a two-peak structure provides an optimal arousal curve.
This article investigates the role of the telephone as both an engine of suspense and a metaphorical double of cinema in Black Christmas directed by Bob Clark (1974). Employing Michel Chion’s concept of acousmatic voice, the article first explores the role of the telephone in creating both narrative suspense and diegetic cohesion. It then investigates how the film implicitly establishes a pattern of resemblance between the telephonic and cinematic mediums centred on their capacities for diffusion and disembodiment. Finally, the article explores the meta-cinematic implications of its preceding findings, arguing that the fears and anxieties associated with the telephone in Black Christmas ultimately concern cinema itself and its possible cultural impact. Although it attempts to enforce certain categories of knowledge and identity, Black Christmas ultimately engages with cinema’s capacity for subverting rather than enforcing ideology.
This article investigates intermedial strategies in Jennifer Kent’s 2014 film The Babadook, arguing that such strategies are a key feature of its aesthetics of horror. Employing concepts from the field of Intermedial Studies, it traces the presence in Kent’s film of bookishness, that is, different intermedial strategies that serve to mimic the formal properties of books in general and pop-up books in particular. It also demonstrates how the film’s many references to early silent film, and in particular the trick films of French cinematic pioneer, Georges Méliès, function as a self-reflexive exploration of the form and function of the bookishness evident in the film. Based on this analysis, this article then coins the term of ‘monstrous intermediality’ to describe intermedial strategies that unsettle but do not subvert the processes of integration and immersion characteristic of narrative cinema, thereby destabilizing the distinction between screen and viewer.
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