Thursday 7 October 2010

Key elements of a Trailer

Here is a list of the Key elements of the Trailer that we are going to produce. We are going to create a checklist to facilitate our working process.

Main aspects of a Trailer

1. The Trailer has to be very short although it has to contain a brief summary of the movie, and make you want to watch it.

2. The Trailer has to have an introduction of the main character(s) and maybe other characters.

3.  Usually fast editing makes a trailer very exciting, or good timed transition are a very important point.

4. It has to have a cliffhanger at the end, so the audience will actually want to watch the movie, because they want to know the ending etc.

5. Our Trailer has to have teenage (main)characters, to represent the genre Teen Horror.

6. It does not have to spoil the story! The Trailer has to be a brief summary of the movie, without revealing the ending nor the main story.

7. It has to contain different companies, such as producer, distributor, (exhibitor) etc.

8. Our genre is Teen Horror so it'll have to be quite scary obviously.


9. The Trailer has to have the title either at the beginning or at the end. Big titles with special effects always make a good impact on the audience.


10. Important things such as the characters should be filmed with a close up shot (or just as close as possible) so the audience is able to identify what they're seeing in this short time period of the clip and the less important things such as locations are often filmed with a shot where you can see the whole panorama, that tells briefly where the movie is going to play/ where the location(s) will be.


Now I'm going to make a short analysis of the Trailer 'SAW' that is a very good example of a standard trailer that includes all of the points.




First we don't really know what is going to happen. We can see a man in a dark location, probably his flat trying to find a way to turn the lights back on. But he hears something and uses the first object close to him to brighten the place up. He does that by taking photographs using the flash with his camera. This is already a quite scary part, imagining that there is somebody or something hidden in your flat and you cannot see a thing!
After walking around, he finds were the noise is coming from and suddenly something jumps out of the dark and attacks him (shock effect). This again is a very common method to make a trailer scary. Shock effects are very short and make a huge impact on the audience, if you have watched a horror movie, you should know that feeling you get when suddenly something jumps out of nowhere or you hear a very loud noise, this reaction is instinctive and is manipulated in horror movies to give the audience this very specific horror feeling.
After this short scene we get introduced to the different (main)characters and the mentioning of a killer. This is a very important part, so the audience can see with which characters/actors they are going to deal with. Some of the audience will just be watching the movie because of the actor. The introduction of the characters usually happens at the beginning of the trailer or in the middle (the introduction can be as well at the end but that is more for Thriller movies).
The last part of the trailer is where the most happens, there's usually a lot of action involved, sfx such as explosions, in this trailer it is the man throwing something at the mirror and the other blond man is going crazy as well as the first man we're being introduced to. That is the part where the audience is being shown what great scenes the movie is going to contain, that is the best way to attract and address the audience and to really want to make them want to see the movie.
At the very end of the trailer there's usually a comedown, where the title of the movie is shown and when the movie is going to be shown in the cinemas. This comedown, where the trailer suddenly stops is often used as a cliffhanger, to make the audience want to watch the movie.

Written by Henri Yueksel
Candidate Number 4450

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