Trailers

Trailer Purpose

Trailers are the film advertising tool which is the easiest way of getting to the mass audience. The purpose of a trailer is to give a insight into the film, it gives short synapses of the film to grab their intended audiences eye if they manage to do this then the key details such as the release dates will me noticed and the audience will start talking about the movie, this is the first step for the film as they are hoping that the intended audience will have been caught, then the use of word of mouth will start spreading, friends telling friends creating an even larger audience base. 

Trailer Conventions

Together as a class we looked at trailer conventions. How trailers are structured, and what they entail. Trailers give a insight into the film, a short synapses of the film to grab their intended audiences eye and then tell them the title and release dates. Trailers are exploited in several ways, they may be displayed on the TV, at the cinema, on the internet or you can usually get a critics review in the paper.

We concentrated on one particular film Piranha. The genre of this film is horror/thriller; It uses several different techniques to get its genre across to the audience in the trailer. The first two main things I would say they use to get your attention is what you're seeing and what you're hearing directly. 



Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW5_4gZ0Jn4



So as it is a horror/thriller they will want the tempo to be quite high, creating tension and a mystery to what is happening. To accompany this they use sound to create an atmosphere and to get your imagination going, the sound starting slowly and speeding up at particular moments grabbing your attention making you ask yourself what is going to happen at those several different points in the film. Along with the sound of the heart beat they added in the deep thumping sound, this may be used to get your own heart going by the tension it is building and the adrenaline which will be released.

The trailer shows a variety of things which the producer thinks will grab the audience’s attention making them want to come and watch this film. In this trailer they showed a large amount of partying and girls and guys in swimwear. I think they did this as it creates that elderly teenage atmosphere grabbing your attention by using props such as booze, swimwear, big speakers and big boat. A sort of ultimate party scenario. They then got across the horror/thriller genre of the film by showing specific points in the film which were increasingly bloody and would shock the viewer, making the audience ask themselves, "What is happening here ?", " This is new and different I wonder what will be next?", 

They also usually have a unique selling point, it can vary from having a very famous actor or having SFX, but in Piranhas case is was 3D, but as it is trailered on TV they could only show this using inter-titles. 

Trailer Research

Before we started planning our film we researched into other trailers which had they same genre as us thriller/horror. We focused on how they built up tension and there use of camera angles. Also how they structured there trailer. How they faded from one scene to the next in the film. 

Cobra. Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObUuFsYgyGE

The first trailer we looked at was Cobra, this film stars Sylvester Stallone. It is about psycho maniac who is on the loose trying to kill an innocent victim. I particularly liked this trailer because although it is short, it gives a good insight into the narrative and the plot. It introduces the victim and in the short time you come to feel sympathetic. It build ups a great amount of tension, you don't know how this fierce cop (Sylvester Stallone) will come to bringing down this criminal. It uses great camera angles and really grabs your attention.

 Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObUuFsYgyGE

The second trailer I watched was The Dark Knight, is based on the novel of Batman and has The Joker as the villain. It is very sarcotic and violent. The perfect thriller/horror. I loved this trailer because it built so much tension and showed the two main characters Batman and The Joker, and it makes you really want to watch the show down. The use of camera angles was very well done , it really helped create a tense atmosphere. The tempo of the editing, making your body release adrenaline whilst you sit down and watch. I liked this trailer very much due to those points of fast flowing tempo and getting the audience totally immersed.