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Lily asked for some clarification on some theorists points in relation to horror film trailers,
Murray Smith talks about....'Identification seems to imply taking on another’s state of being, but we don’t necessarily mimic a character’s emotions. We might pity a grieving widow, but she isn’t feeling pity, she’s feeling grief. Smith talks instead of allegiance, the extending of our sympathy and other emotions to characters on the basis of their emotional states. Allegiance, Smith maintains, depends partly on the moral evaluations we make about the character’s actions and personality.', in the case of Lily and Melania's trailers we feel a greater allegiance to your character as we have seen her birthday celebrations, surrounded by a loving family and friends, the horror and tragedy is heightened as we can, i) identify with her as a loved family member, ii) imagine what the next birthday anniversary would be like without her.

Bordwell and Thompson focus on narrative suggests that the use of flashbacks is a very useful narrative device to quickly establish a 'back story' and to encourage the sense of allegiance that Smith suggests is important to increase an audiences engagement and enjoyment of a horror film. 

In summary, if an audience doesn't care about the protagonist, they are not going to be interested in whether they survive or not. If you felt your film would be like that you would probably agree with one of the feminist theorists such as Linda Williams who suggests that audiences, particularly male ones, gain pleasure from gore she calls horror films body genres", since they are each designed to elicit physical reactions on the part of viewers. Horror is designed to elicit spine-chilling, white-knuckled, eye-bulging terror; melodramas are designed to make viewers cry after seeing the misfortunes of the onscreen characters; and pornography is designed to elicit sexual arousal.^[

Jenkins theory is more to do with online media he suggests that convergence be understood as a cultural process, rather than a technological end-point. That is, audiences have more of an input into texts as convergence has allowed them to contribute, either as simply as deciding when to watch a TV programme or film on iplayer, or from actively participating in the construction of a text.

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