Wednesday, 30 November 2016

Trailer structure and conventions

After watching the official trailer of Night crawler (2014) starring Jake Gyllenhaal repeatedly, I gained a better understanding of how a trailer is structured. I wanted to have a professional look for our final edit of our trailer Contradiction, and by watching the Night crawler trailer I now know what to include, where to place and why we need it.












1. At the very beginning we will need a BBFC background establishing the certificate rating for a 15 rated film, we need this because this is a film trailer convention and so this can improve the professional finished look as we are following trailer paradigms.












2. Part way through early on in the trailer, we will need to show our production logo for Siberian Studios for a few seconds. This just clearly states what company made the film like MGM, Pixar and Paramount.












3. After this a little further into the trailer, we will show a short caption of the release date. We have to do this so that we can constantly remind the audience when the film will be released so they know when they can see it in the cinema.













4. Next we will show a short caption saying "From the creators of MUTATION and Too late". Film studios mention information like this to make it more high profile and tell the audience that their film was made by people who have created other great films, and so this will make people watching the trailer want to watch the film if they are familiar with the work of the creators.













5. Caption of actors names is important for a simple reason. Star power. Stating the actors names can be extremely influential for audiences, due to the fact that they may really like a particular actor especially if they are a nominee or a winner of an acting award of some sort. To the audience, for them it guarantee;s that they will witness high standard performances if they watch the film; they will be more trusting an open minded tto watch a new film.













6. Title at the end of the trailer to reinforce and make the name memorable. When the title is placed is actually quite clever; it is placed at the end so that it is one of the last things they see, and will be more likely to remember. Whereas if it was at the beginning or middle the trailer, audience will be less likely to remember. However this won't be the very end of the trailer as I've noticed in almost all the trailers I have been watching they have a short clip straight after the title of the film.













7. After having the end clip, we will have a short caption afterwards saying the following " Release date FB/Contradictionmovie #contradictionmovie Siberian Studios". Again, the release date is repeated for the same reason as I mentioned above, but by promoting the film on social media they are able to reach the masses globally and easily.












8. Our trailer will also contain a couple of captions briefly explaining the narrative to give the audience a general understanding. We prefer caption to voice over because it's a more dated cinematic approach to trailers.