'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' sound deconstruction

The following teaser trailer is from the 2011 mystery-thriller 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' directed by David Fincher.

• The non-diegetic background music played throughout the whole trailer is a cover of 'Immigrant Song' by Led Zeppelin, performed by Trent Razor and Atticus Ross. The track was recorded for the film's soundtrack. 

• The fast-paced background music begins almost immediately, accompanied by the quick cut edits of the shots displayed. Despite the background music starting almost immediately, a slight non-diegetic whirling sound can be heard at the beginning of the trailer for a few seconds as the camera mounted on the car swings steadily onto the road. The sound is mainly of the wind whirling. This short build up of sound gives the start of the trailer a mysterious feeling as well as being parallel to the wintry and harsh conditions the opening shot shows.

• The non-diegetic music could be described as rapid and frantic as it holds a steady and fast-paced beat throughout the trailer. This conforms to the thriller genre as one of the main conventions of this particular genre is the use of build-ups within scenes and fast-paced sequences. 

• Different elements of the background music such as the vocals and electric guitar are harsh in order to create a further frantic feeling and almost a lack of order.

• The music is edited at the end of the trailer in a way so that the visual text, displaying the title of the film an the trilogy it is based on, changes in time with the steady and fast-paced beat of the background music. As the text is displayed, the music is distorted with the sound of strong feedback which almost acts as a dramatic climax tot the build up created by the fast-paced music throughout the whole trailer. A build-up followed by a climax are both conventions of the thriller genre.

• The single track playing throughout the whole of the trailer works well in a teaser trailer like this one, rather than the full trailer for a film. This is due to the way the visuals of a teaser trailer aim to give very little of the narrative away, with the use of a single track over the top largely complementing this idea. The use of a single track within a teaser trailer is an idea I would like to explore and perhaps incorporate in our teaser trailer.