Tamika: Teaser Trailer Textual Analysis of Nightmare on Elm Street

The textual analysis will be focusing on the teaser trailer for ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The dream child 200’, which was distributed by ‘New line cinema’. The teaser trailer is 47 seconds long, which is just in between the 40-60 second mark.

Media trailer

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child 1989 it was directed by Stephen Hopkins and the writers are Wes craven john skip and Robert Endlund, Lisa Wilcox and Kelly Jo Minter.

The video,’ A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 Dream Child’ teaser trailer starts with a green screen and it says that the preview has been approved for all audiences to watch by the motion picture association of America. The words ‘PREVIEW’ and ‘ALL AUDIENCE’ are in capital letters. This makes it clear to the audience that the movie is suitable for people to watch.

The teaser opens up with a fade from a black screen into a blue screen showing a silhouette of a push chair with sticks sticking out of it. A non- diegetic sound of a high pitched laugh and a lullaby called ‘rock a by baby’ is symbolic to the trailer because the song connotes a baby. The video also shows a push chair made out of wood. The branches are sticking out of it so it makes it look quite dangerous. As the song increases the push chair moves with it and the camera goes from a long high angle shot to a close up of the push chair. There is a fade in of a orange/red light that appears to show in the pram. Also, you can hear a faint sound of a baby making noise. As the camera is still, it follows the pram using a panning shot. The pram then disappears showing a jump cut. The setting is quite cloudy/ foggy and dark, making it look scary, using low key lighting. 27 seconds into the teaser the pram swings a little from left to right as if someone is rocking the push chair.

Then there is a cut from a side shot of the pram to the front of it showing a orange bright light in the pram with smoke surrounding it. There is a zoom in to the pram and the song starts to slow down and stops, then there’s a scream at the same time suddenly freddy’s hand appears from the push chair to the camera. There’s a quick zoom in to a black screen and red line scratches where the words a nightmare on elm street 5 on it.  

There is also a deep scary voice saying “spring delivers a nightmare on elm street part 5 The dream child” as it says that the red scratches fades out and fades into a blue coloured screen but at the side of the black screen with the push chair which is black covered with the blue coloured screen. The words ‘a nightmare on elm street’ are in blue just like the main colour used throughout the teaser and the words  ‘the dream child’ is in green writing. Most of the colours that are used for the title is the same colour scheme a used in the teaser.

There is a loud raspy laughter after the voice finishes talking and as the laughter continues there is also a fade out of the title to a fade into a black screen with white writing showing who produced the film and who the actors are the producer and editor. At the end of that it says “coming in august to a theatre near you” it is in capital letters, the size of the writing is bigger than the rest and it is in blue writing which makes it stand out more so that the first thing that people will see because  its in colour and remember will be it.

 The lullaby then starts and there is a fade out to a black screen.