Deciding upon a genre is essential before you make any kind of creative decision involving a trailer. A genre defines and categorizes the product that you wish to sell. Whereas a trailer is intended to advertise and inform people about that product, therefore trying to sell a product to an audience before you the creator have decided what that product should be is extremely counterproductive and may ultimately lead to misinformation being spread to your target audience and thus seriously damaging the potential for profit. This was summed up well by Denis McQuail when he argues that genre is an ordering process that simplifies the process for producers to make media that the audiences wish to consume. I have chosen the psychological horror genre for my film and whilst horror is a very well established genre the psychological horror subgenre is far more specific and has not been explored by mainstream media as much. Psychological horror is driven by characters’ fears and focused more on psychological dread than on murder, mutilation, and gore. it can often be supernatural, but is more often associated with twists where the protagonist turns out to be insane or has some other issue with coming to terms with their own mentality or even just society in general.
