There are many things which are essential in a movie trailer. The intention of film advertising is to grab the publics attention and make them want to watch it. Product placement like posters and billboards do not need to give much information but must invite the viewer to find out more about it via magazine articles or the film website, the address of which should be shown on everything, from the poster, bus adverts and the trailer itself.
Unique Selling Point
Our film must have a Unique Selling Point (USP) which is a feature or style used to make our film exceptional and unrivaled by any others in the genre. The story-line should be original and although the film should follow conventions it should have it's own individual flair which can be achieved through location, filming style and actors.
Advertising Competition
The poster and general film image must compete with hundreds of other adverts, posters and magazine articles and there must be something that makes ours stand out. Each poster usually gets about 3-4 seconds of viewing time by each person as they walk past. Sometimes people wont even notice it but there has to be something which makes them at least take in the name of the film. The font is a very important factor of the house style and there should be as few as possible used.
The film trailer will predominantly be set in this kind of environment, surrounded by untamed trees which although still have vibrant green foliage will make the area much more enclosed and block out light from the surrounding area more than bare trees and branches would. The rickety old wooden gate that leads to nowhere further enforces the idea that no one has been here in a long time and if something was to happen it would be a while before anyone discovered anything.
This is a narrow path which leads into total darkness, the overgrown trees would frame the shot if we wanted a person running into it and also close in on the protagonist the further down the path they run. This would be difficult to illuminate in the darkness so we would need to film at dusk when it is light enough to see but not broad daylight. We could darken the film later in the editing process to make it more eerie. The leaves on the trees and the moss on the bare branches gives the whole frame an eerie green glow.
In my previous photo analysis' at the start of the project I mentioned how the colour or brightness of a light can change the mood of the shot. The same theory is applied here with the colour of the surroundings.
Most of the trailer trailer will be set in a house, there is nothing unusual about it. It is a regular home where the protagonist can feel safe and puts the audience in a false sense of security as she goes through her daily routine of coming back from work and picking up her mail. The disruption to the routine when she receives strange letters is something that could easily happen to anyone and makes this film more frightening than if it were happing somewhere or to someone unusual and this can sit in the mind of the audience throughout the film.
The main characters in my trailer include the film protagonist (a female), the bartender (a male) and an evil presence (either human or spiritual). Other people in the trailer will include the extras which will play the part of other previous victims. The trailer will show flashes of these victims in parallel with the main female character.
The main protagonist is shown in a bar ordering drinks. She is drunk and the barman tells her she has had to much.
He proceeds to warn her that she could get hurt in the state she's in but when she refuses to listen he begins to tell her a story about people who have previously mysteriously disappeared after leaving the pub in such a state.
As he tells the story the trailer shows all the events which he talks about, happening to the woman who he is talking to. The barman then becomes the narrator of the trailer dictating the horrifying situations the woman finds herself in. It is around this point that the pace of the trailer quickens and suspense begins to build.
Pans and flashes of an eerie looking house set the scene for where the film is set, the trailer will give the idea that this is in the middle of nowhere and any help the woman hopes to find is inside this house.
The shot shows the protagonist running down a road through thick trees, during the shot there are several flashbacks of the same thing happening to other people, these will be distinguished by an effect like sepia or be made blurry.
An ironic shot of the girl telling her another person she knows that she'll be ok, shown quickly between screaming and running and flashes of trees and fast breathing.
A person standing on the wrong side of a bridge looking scared as though they are about to jump but not really wanting to. Sobbing noises, maybe a desperate but quiet plea for help.
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She turns around and walks out of the pub as the doors close a bolt of lightning flashes and the screen goes black. After which the title of the film appears as well as credits and a website.
I have been asked to use a trailer which fits my chosen genre and analyze it in detail, commenting on the narrative, mise en scene, camera angles, dialogue and setting. The film trailer I have chosen to analyze is 'The Others' because it follows conventions seen in most films.
Sight
The trailer begins with the green screen telling the viewers that it has been approved for all audiences. Following this is the company logo which fades in from black. The fade from black is a common transition in the horror/thriller genre because a main characteristic is something slowly appearing from the blackness and is used a lot throughout this trailer, it gives the trailer a pulse which speeds up as the trailer progresses subconsciously causing the heartbeat of the audience to speed up. The first shot of the film shows a foggy setting with a bare twisted tree branch reaching across the top half the shot framing the mansion behind as if it was trapped or being grabbed which represents the evil presence which grasps the house, the mansion is barely visible behind the thick fog with connotes an air of mystery surrounding it. This immediately tells us the genre of the film is horror. The next shot is that of the inside of the house. A quick pan across a staircase further increases our idea of where this film is being set.
The next sequence of shots introduces the main characters into the plot, starting with the woman who we presume owns the house. The next people introduced are the housekeepers, we see that the woman and the older female housekeeper stand in exactly the same position with their hands held in front of them which suggests the two will have a stronger link than house owner and house keeper. Next the children are introduced, dressed in white which contrasts with the dark surroundings, this gives them an angelic or ghostly persona.
After the introduction of the main characters the relationship between these characters is established to the audience. Primarily, the conversation between the two children and the nanny is used to show how the children are undecided of the new nanny. The code of expression for the next few shots shows uncertainty between the children and the nanny, the mother and the nanny and the fear from the young boy contrasting with the confidence of the young girl when the curtains are flung open in the bedroom.
The lighting throughout the whole trailer is overall, very dull and orange. This creates the effect of candle light and positioning of the light casts long shadows across the set, further adding to the creepy mysterious aura which has been made. In some shots, the lighting produces a chiaroscuro like effect on the faces of the protagonists, a style which has been taken from film noir and used to emphasise the untrustworthiness and mysteriousness of the situation.
During the climactic scenes instead of fading through black the shots quickly flash white between each other perhaps symbolising lightning or even flashes through time as the trailer flicks backwards and forwards through the storyline. At the end after the suspense falls we see the film title then a girl sitting playing with a puppet. The puppet suggests she has control over something and she hums eerily. As the camera cuts from the mother and back to the girl we see she is dressed in a white dress symbolising purity and innocence but also giving her a ghostly appearance which contrasts with the innocence and creates an extremely eerie scene.
Sound
"Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin."
The first thing we hear is a woman's voice ask this question as if she is about to tell a bedtime story. This is ironic because bedtime story's are meant to put children at ease before they sleep but the eerie way in which she says it makes the audience uneasy and the opposite of comfortable. The music starts immediately after, it does not fade in, it just begins on the first shot of the tree branch and the house. In this trailer there is a lot of dialogue which is uncommon in horror films. Usually horror trailers are based on the visual aspect of the film whereas much of the information about the film is given through the conversations between the different characters. The section in the middle of the trailer from about in most of the trailer there is very little music, however there is a lot of eerie sound effects like howling wind and creaking doors. All stereotypical of the genre. As the exposition progresses the more frequent the sound effects become building up tension until a crescendo where the characters are seen frantically running and panicking. There is a faint tune in the background but is barely audible above the shouting, running and banging which is being played louder in the action part. Suddenly the crashing stops and everything turns calm. The housekeeper says "sooner or later, they'll find you" an eerie sentence which sticks in the audiences head because of the silence it broke. A flickering sound is heard as the film title appears which is followed by a ghostly humming by a little girl. In this context it sounds sinister and creepy and the audience know that she's no ordinary girl.
