Hostel Trailer Analysis

In terms of camerawork, we start off with an establishing shot which obviously gives us an indication of the dark, dirty and dreary scene that we’re entering, throughout the clip, there is lots of quick close ups and extreme close ups of things such as dripping water, the woman’s toes as she then screams as well a high angle close up of the tools to show a range of ‘weapons’
As already mentioned when explaining the establishing shot, the setting is made to look very dark, drear, wet and abandoned to signify that some bad things may happen. As expected by the nature of the movie the actors (although no dominant ones) are wearing things like aprons and masks as if to carry out a delicate operation with their tools which look like dentist tools which we also see. The only item of make-up that we see is the red nail polish on the victim’s foot which isn’t too important, although, could signify that it is a woman getting treated badly and the polish makes them seem more beautiful and would therefore get the audience on the victim’s side and make us sympathise with the victim even though we do not see her face or know anything substantial about the characters.
The editing is important in terms of the yellow/orange coloured fiery text that comes on screen. The trailer would fade to black as the text comes up and then generally immediately flash back to the trailer as the text disappeared. At a few points, later in the trailer there are also a few flashes of ‘negative’ views to make it all more exciting. As a rule the shots are longer at the beginning of the trailer and as the music, sound and action build as we go further into the trailer, the shots get shorter.
The sounds aren’t that important for most of the trailer. Particularly violins and drums are used to create the soundtrack and this soundtrack gets louder and the beat gets faster as the action builds. There are also diegetic sounds in terms of the yelps and screams of the victim as well as the drill and other things which go on. As the text comes up in some parts of the trailer, there is a short sharp, almost metallic sound to make it scarier. The only words that are spoken are those of the male saying “Hostel” in a low, scary voice at the end as the same word comes up on the screen.