Devil Trailer
The trailer for Devil begins with the titles of the production and distribution companies, about 3 being listed on the screen, the beginning shots are first the shots with one of the trailer’s two types of titles in it, wherein the shots are upside down establishing shots taken from helicopters moving in on the city. The titles read, on any ordinary day, implying instantly to the audience that this day will be anything but ordinary. There is a spiral shot of part of the bridge leaving the city, both this shot and this upside down form of titling show particularly to the audience that the world is being turned upside down, the directors are trying to induce an immediate sense of fear, implying that everything that we think we know will no longer be relevant or applicable or correct, this impression is helped by the inclusion of really creepy music in this trailer.
There is a tracking shot following a young woman into a building, the creepy music is finally broken by the sound of her high heels on the floor and some dialogue between her and a security man in uniform, most of this conversation is non diegetic with the shots which is also an interesting technique, it implies that there is something not quite right with these characters, the dialogue also sounds a little too innocent to be unimportant further creating a sense of unrest among the audience.
There is fast editing between two of the upside down title scenes, in which there is a wipe cut shot showing a crowd of people in office dress, emphasizing the normality of this way of life in New York, which is where the story is based. There is also a montage of all the key characters of the film with rapid cuts to a black screen and then back to a short piece of film. The mise-en-scene of characters is important; there are five people, the guard, who looks officious and reassuring in his uniform, the young woman is dressed in an office trouser suit, she is everything society deems attractive and has a certain sex appeal in her clothes as well therefore she appears confident, the third character is an Asian guy dressed in a grey suit, he has a slightly chubby face, not a particularly modern or stylish hairstyle and a sad expression suggesting to us that he is a slightly boring, under- confident, office worker. The character of the older woman is slightly more sinister in that her dark clothes and white collar clash completely with her orange hair, also black being the colour of death, it does not have very good connotations, her expression is also slightly sinister, as though she knows what is going on, the final character also appears quite sinister in the single shot of him, which is the first we see of him he is carrying a holdall bag, jeans, hoodie with the hood up, a jacket, shirt and cheap tie, all of these are hardly office clothes for one thing and also his demeanour and body language seems slightly suspect. The elevator which the characters go into is important to examine, there are false wooden panels and a mirror opposite the doors.
There is a zoom shot which goes down from a birds eye view into a building, it goes down through an air ventilator system and down into an elevator shaft, here it zooms through several sets of titles, which inform us that the events of today are not coincidences and that everything is happening for a reason. The editing used in this trailer is interesting, sometimes the dialogue doesn’t match the shots, which allows the director to tell more of the story that way, there is a fade to black with panicked dialogue which creates suspense. There is also a flash on a computer monitor which shows to us the five people as corpses, there is the emphasized sound of a heartbeat which creates a greater feeling of suspense and also allows us to more connect with the characters and share their fear.
For the final thirty seconds of the film despite the variety of shots from the film combined into a montage in order to create a greater sense of fear there is the sound of an elevator bell indicating progress, which speeds up in order to create a greater sense of fear, this part of the film is also where the other titles get brought in, simply red words on a black screen.
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