2 Guns trailer analysis.

2 Guns is a film that was brought out on the 5th of august 2013. The main protagonists in this fast paced, action packed film were Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg. The purpose of the analysis is to see what type of shots, sounds, editing and mise en scene are used in an action trailer. I will then use any findings I have found to make my own action trailer. Below is an overview of the storyline in the film.

“Academy Award winner Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg star in this explosive action comedy that tracks two operatives from competing bureaus who are forced to run together. But there is a big problem with their unique alliance -- neither knows that the other is an undercover federal agent.

For the past 12 months, DEA agent Bobby Trench (Washington) and US naval intelligence officer Marcus Stigman (Wahlberg) have been reluctantly attached at the hip. Working undercover as members of a narcotics syndicate, each man distrusts his partner as much as the criminals they have both been tasked to take down.

When their attempt to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel and recover millions goes haywire, Trench and Stigman are suddenly disavowed by their superiors. Now that everyone wants them in jail or in the ground, the only person they can count on is each other. Unfortunately for their pursuers, 2 Guns prove they're better than one!”

Conventions of Genre

Starting with the conventions of genre; this film is very typical of an action based film. There are a lot of high octane scenes including explosions and gun fights. The editing within the trailer is very fast paced and cuts between scenes from the start, middle and ending of the film. It includes many different characters that can be encountered during the movie. The movie also has a storyline that is fairly complicated and hard to pick up from just the trailer. All of this makes the audience want to watch the film upon its release because it contains the spectacle factor that many big, high budget movies have.

Here you can see a very typical scene of an action film; there are guns and this establishing shot details what the film might be about. (Bank heist etc…)

Conventions of Form

Moving onto conventions of form. This trailer is very stereotypical in terms of a trailer. It details the story but doesn’t give too much away and therefor leaves the audience craving for more. It has some diegetic music in the middle of the trailer. This music is related to the actions happening within the scene or relates to the storyline of the film. In this film trailer they used All along the watchtower, which is saying that they need to be careful in the events to come but there will always be someone watching over them (watchtower). The song is non diegetic which is conventional for a film trailer.

Camera work

Moving onto the camerawork used in this trailer. An over the shoulder shot is used very regularly as you can see from the screenshots below.

These really help emphasise the conversation that is being held on screen. This also allows the audience to get a grasp on the storyline that the film is telling. I also noticed the use of an Aerial shot, combined with an establishing shot. This helps to show the location of the film as well as an aerial view of the actors in the shot. You can see this below in the screenshot. I think that this is very conventional for an action movie because it uses these shots to high light everything important about the film.

Editing

The editing in this trailer is mainly using fade out and fade in. This makes the effect of changing scenes more prominent. This shows that the trailer is showing that this scenes are linked by are not consecutive which is conventional for a trailer. You can see it here in the screenshot below.

These two scenes are shown together with just a black screen in between.

There is a large use of action matches in this trailer. This not only shows you areas of the shot from different angles which emphasises the fact that this is an action match.

Sound

Diegetic sound is used in the start of the trailer, this sets the scene and mood of the trailer but doesn’t really show anything in particular. Later on half way through the trailer the introduction of non-diegetic sound in the form of music is introduced. Ed sheeran and devlin are played as different scenes of the film are shown. This creates a Montage of the action packed scenes that are designed to make the audience want to watch it. Many trailers show the bests bits from the film to entice their audience.