Harry Textual Analysis of a teaser trailer

Movie title: Saw
Year of release: 2004
Director: James Wan
Producer: Gregg Hoffman, Mark Burg and Oren Koules
Production by: Evolution Entertainment and Twisted Pictures
Distributed by: Lionsgate
Actors: Cary Elwes, Michael Emerson, Ken Leung, Leigh Whannell, Tobin Bell, Monica Potter, Danny Glover

Synopsis: Saw is based around two males waking up in a bathroom together, chained to pipes, no escape, a dead man lying between them holding a tape player and a handgun.
Upon playing the tape they find out that their only way of escaping is one killing the other by 6:00 or their wife and daughter will die. These two men are the newest in a long line of victims of the notorious ‘Jigsaw Killer’. Although, ironically, he has never killed any of his victims but instead finds out ways to manipulate his targets and make them kill themselves, or each other.

Saw was the first, in a very successful, sequence of 7 movies of the Saw series. Each movie grossed millions at the box office; with Saw grossing $103 million from a low budget, in the region of $1million - 1.2 million. Part of this budget was spent on trailers and Saw’s teaser trailer is what I’ll be analyzing in this blogpost.

Before I’d even watched the trailer, I soon found out that it doesn’t follow the usual conventions of a horror teaser trailer. By this, I mean that the video itself is ‘1:01’ minutes long. This means that it doesn’t follow the usual conventions of a teaser trailer as a normal teaser trailer lasts between 30-60 seconds in time. So Saw is ‘1’ second over the usual convention of a teaser trailer.

 
The trailer starts off with a T.V. being played showing a masked figure saying the words ‘I want to play a game’.

It then cuts to a 1 second clip of quick, scribblings of a cut out piece of paper, being held in by a pin, with the heading being ‘Doctor Questioned in Jigsaw Case’ then there is use of internal digetic sound with a man doing a voice over saying ‘The Jigsaw Killer’, giving the audience the idea that the so called ‘Jigsaw Case’ must of been involved a murder of some kind. 

Another cut quickly shows a dark, black background with the words ‘It’s His Game’, written in an eerie white font. The darkness of this background connotes danger and makes the audience feel tense, as they cannot see what will possibly happen next.

As there is a transition and the scene now moves, there is some dialog to throw doubt into the viewers mind, as to who they now think the ‘Jigsaw Murder’ is and what he does. This dialog has the same man speaking again, saying the sentence “technically speaking, he’s not really a murderer. He never killed anyone. He finds ways for his victims to kill themselves.” This quick dialogue from 0:07 seconds to 0:13 seconds is very effect in creating tension, it does this through a variety of shots in the trailer. 

During these 6 seconds we see 3 different images, letting us get an idea of what ‘Jigsaw’ looks like, what the man speaking looks like and lastly a black, ghoul like figure walking in what looks like an abandoned basement. With the first image it shows a man standing in a window, being recorded, possibly showing that police have him under surveillance because of how dangerous he is. We know that he is being recorded because of the old style video recording sign in the top right of the shot, with the image zooming in, we don’t see enough of the figure to know what costume he is wearing, so we can’t tell whether he follows the usual conventions of an antagonist.

The next shot, showing the man speaking, just shows a man sitting on the floor of a grimy basement with no shoes on, dirty feet and just a blue shirt and navy jeans. The shot in fact doesn’t go along with usual conventions of horror for the use of lighting as the lighting in this shot is ‘high-key’, showing lots of light on the person, almost giving the viewer ‘hope’. This connotates him as a hard working man, from wearing a smart shirt and the fact he has his shoes and socks off, going with the popular phrase from a hard worker of ‘I’ve worked my socks off’. It also gives us an idea that he is in danger, from the fact a hardworking man would not be stuck on the floor of a dirty bathroom, talking about potential murderers.

The scene then cuts to the a quick shot of a dark, grim-reaper-like, figure slowly walking. This shot is entirely different from the last. Reason’s being that we cannot see the person, in questions, face or see any features about them. The setting is also different from the last shot, with the figure being in a basement type setting, instead of a bathroom. We can tell this from the use of props, such as the vault turner to the left of the figure, showing this is where you work gas or heating like you would in a basement. There is also different lighting used in this shot, rather than have high-key lighting, showing the figure in a happy/hope manner there is “low-key” lighting and an eerie green flog behind this person. Giving the viewer, the idea straight away that this person is the antagonist and person to be fearful of.

We then go back to the bathroom scene, but straight away see the person that the first man was talking to. This person has NVC of a very worried expression, almost fearful of his life. We quickly gather that this mans name is “Adam’. This is because we hear a voice saying “hello Adam’ – possibly showing why ‘Adams’ face was so worried, because someone knows his name. Then it cuts to a shot of the original man and again we hear the same voice saying “Mr Gordon”, meaning the person speaking is addressing them. “Mr Gordon’s” NVC has gone from calm and collective in the pervious shot we saw of him to a very worried one. We sense this because he now has a worried expression and his shirt is soaked with sweat – connotating that he is sweating out of fear for his life, because this voice also knows his name. His head also tilts upwards, to show that he could be looking at something, or something scary has caught his eyes from the fact his face becomes more and more worried the more he looks up.

Adam (top) and Mr Gordon (bottom)

With the score still playing, it then makes a drop and transits into more writing, this time saying “AND IT’S YOUR MOVE” – this could go along with the whole idea behind the Jigsaw killer and what he said earlier of “I’d like to play a game” as ‘and its your move’ could be seen as playing a game and now its your move to make in the game.

In a fury of shots it goes from lights being turned on and the camera following each light as they’re turned on, too a voiceover of “Mr Gordon” speaking saying “He wants us to cut through our chains” and a series of quick cuts showing a Saw – going with the title of the movie, with a man screaming saying ‘nooo’ and then Mr Gordons voice then coming back into the scene saying “He wants us to cut through our feet”. This could mean that the reason a man screamed saying ‘nooo’ was because he has to cut through his own feet, to be apart of the game Jigsaw likes to play.

The score then suddenly ends and we hear a voice, that had spoken to Adam and Mr Gordon earlier, saying “Let the game begin” and then the shot with the text ‘and it’s your move’ comes back, further showing that this man speaking wants you to be apart of the game he’s playing.

A fade transition then goes to a shot of an old T.V. set, showing the puppet from the very first shot in the trailer. A banging sound cuts the shot to a rather large man on all fours, in what appears to be a cage looking distressed, not knowing where he is. We then hear the same voice saying, “if you want to die, just stay where you are”, almost sounding like he’s giving the victim an offer. A sound of the slicing of a knife then breaks up the scene, to the same man now running about very fast in the cage but getting tangled up in what appears to be barbed wire. We know it’s barbed wire because of the sharp look of it and the fact the man is now screaming, showing the pain that is being caused to him.

 

 
The trailer proceeds to show more of Jigsaws victims as it now shows a woman, with her head locked into a metal head brace. Her eyes are wide open and she is scrambling her hands around the back of the head brace, connotating fear inside her as she is looking for a way to escape the clutches of the head-lock. The use of a ‘ticking’ digetic sound highlights the fact that this woman could be looking to work against a time limit to escape from the head brace. The camera then proceeds to spin around this woman, in a variety of quick cuts possibly showing that she is running out of time to escape and it leaves us on a cliffhanger as the scene then just cuts to the next cut, leaving the viewer with a sense of tense as they do not know whether she managed to escape the head brace in time.

The score is now an eerie sound of what sounds like somebody gasping for breath. Through a variety of shots we see Mr Gordon holding what appears to be his shirt he had on earlier in his mouth and his right up moving up and down quickly. This tells us that he has decided to actually play the Jigsaws game and cut through his own foot, with his arm moving to show him holding the saw and hacking through his foot and the shirt in his mouth to make him able to withhold the pain and carry on without passing out. Notice how the lighting is still high key, so as not to give the viewer fear of not being able to see what’s behind Mr Gordon and his NVC showing an almost manic like facial expression.

We then see two characters, who we’ve not seen before, with a Black man reaching his arm out in low-key lighting as if he’s looking for anyone’s help to get out of the situation he is in and a Caucasian woman crying by the side of a bed, showing that she too might have been apart of the Jigsaws game.

Score is reaching it’s utmost peak, with quick paced sounds being played and we then see a man-like figure running through what appears to be an alley in low-key lighting. The man is dressed in a suit, showing he could be apart of the F.B.I as they dress very smart, and he’s on the look out for Jigsaw, hence why he’s running down a dark alley pointing towards something.

But before we can find out what he sees down the alley the scene makes another quick cut, this time to show a trapdoor shutting in a cellar. This could go back to the point of where the woman had a ‘ticking’ sound playing, showing that whoever was in the cellar ran out of time to escape and thus is now trapped forever. As the trapdoor shuts, the score is timed to make a banging sound the moment the door shuts. This is done to enhance the emotional impact of the scene of the viewers, so they feel as if a door is actually shutting.

The shot goes completely dark for a matter of milliseconds and there is no sound playing, to create suspense but it then quickly comes back into play. This time it returns with high-key lighting being shown, then just as the viewers are given hope it is cruelly taken away from then as the scene then goes dark and a pig mask is shown trying to attack the camera from a bath. 

This is where it then goes back to the original bathroom scene that Adam and Mr Gordon were in, except this time the bathroom isn’t lit up and giving viewers hope, but rather its shown in low-key lighting promoting fear in the audience.

We see a broken chain on the floor, with blood surrounding it. Showing us that Mr Gordon did in fact cut off his own foot and then quickly cutting to an image of a tape recorder on the floor, showing us that this could possibly be where the mans voice saying those things to Mr Gordon and Adam came from.

As the shots progress we hear digetic sound of a person saying “WHYYY” and then just as the scene is about to end we again see Adam, except this time he is hoisting a slab of something in the air and throws it down. This shows to the audience that he was indeed under attack and need to defend hiself. His NVM also shows this, as for once it shows him in a very angry manner, showing that all this time in the bathroom might of drove him crazy. As he pulls this slab down you hear a voice go ‘uhhh’ which could mean that he did infact hit someone and possibly damaged him or her very badly, to defend his own life.

Just when you think the trailer has ended, the score sounds of into Jigsaws voice again, playing over an image of the title of the movie (which we see for the first time) ‘SAW’, saying, “Before dawn, make your choice”. Jigsaws words are also being played over the sound of a children’s toy laughing, showing that Jigsaw just sees this all as fun and games, but instead of playing out completely the sound of this Toy then seems to break down, showing an evil side to even a toy of children’s nature.

The whole trailer then ends, but just before that it comes up again with writing saying “This Fall” – showing when the supposed release of this film is due.