Codes & conventions of a film trailer

Codes & Conventions of a film trailer

Codes & Conventions of a film trailer

Production company logo

The production company logo may benefit from the trailer because if the production company is well known the audience may decide to watch the film because they had enjoyed a previous film they have made.

British Board of Film Classification (BBFC ) Age certification

The British board of film classification determine the minimum age allowed to watch certain films, determined by their content. This tells the viewers of the trailer the target audience so they know if the film is suitable for them. The age certificates is normally shown at the end of the trailer.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is a new convention of film trailers, things such as website URLs, twitter accounts or hash tags, instructions to like their Facebook page. encourages and enables the audience to find out more information about the film. If many people are talking about the film on social networking sites word-of-mouth can become an effective advertising campaign.

FILM TITLES

The title of the film is in every trailer, this shows what film it is you want to watch. The title normally appears at then end of the trailer so that you see if after you are already interested in the film and you are more likely to remember it. The font, colouring and back drop are also usually a good clue as to the genre of the film.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

The Purge film trailer is an example of how social media is used. Using a hash tag is a great way to get the movie more noticed, because it ll be trending around social websites such as Facebook and Twitter. This will gain the movie a bigger audience because these websites are so commonly used; this is also a great way to connect the audience more to the movie by making them feel more involved. The words survive the night also tell us that there is a lot of death and danger in the movie, which is only typical elements of a horror movie, but itll excite and intrigue them more.

An important feature of film trailers is character introductions, whether they have big Hollywood actors or not. This is essential because an audience get pleasure from films by connecting and relating to the characters, by their individual similarities, for example if there is a prominent young female character, people from the target audience who are young and or female connect to the character and are more likely to go watch the film. Also if the film has famous actors and or actress', and the audience have enjoyed some of their previous films, or are fans, they might go watch the new film because they know that they enjoy the actor's work. If the actors are famous then they will often be accompanied by a caption with their name, so their reputation benefits the film. For example, Brad Pitt is a well-known and loved actor, therefore people who like his work may be encouraged to watch the film purely because he is in it. Sometimes in film trailers, it will also say from the director of which is another way of enticing audience, as if people like a certain director, they are likely to enjoy watching more films by them as they will assume the content is similar to those they have enjoyed before.

CHARACTER INTRODUCTION

This is essential for attracting a large audience to the opening night of a film release. The release date is shown on trailers a couple of weeks before the film is released, giving time for a wide audience to have seen it, but close enough to the date that people can plan to see it soon, rather than forgetting about it by the time the date comes around. The release date is usually shown at the end of the trailer, like the film title, so that the trailer grabs the audience's attention then gives them the information they need to go see it.

RELEASE DATE

MUSIC AND VOICE OVERS

Music is a key feature, and can make or break the film trailers. They show the pace of film, genre and often the budget, for example a film may ask an artist to specially make a soundtrack for their film, the bigger the film budget, the bigger the artists on the soundtrack. And people may think that a bigger budget means a better film. Slower more melodic music means the film would be romantic. A higher pitched, staccato tense music suggests that the film would be a thriller/horror. Voice overs are important to guide the audience through the film plot and characters. A voice over can either be an external voice which is added on top of the footage, or the voice over can be sections of dialogue from the actual film.

The length of shots varies considerably, from less than a second, to a few seconds, to a longer period of time. Although a few seconds does not seem long, in a film trailer each second counts. If there is a shot that is intended to build up tension, for example in a thriller, you could have a shot of somebody heavy breathing, this could last longer to build up the suspense. However, you could then have a shot of less than a second showing a scary figure jumping out at the person. The effect of the shot length being short in a thriller is that usually these have the potential to make you jump, especially if it is before a long take, where the audience arent expecting it yet. Short shots usually show mini-clips of things in the film that may be important to the plot, whereas longer shots may be there to give more information about the storyline.

SHOT LENGTH

It is common for a lot of film trailers to be fast paced, in order to show as many clips of the film as possible in order to give an idea of the narrative. However, sometimes the trailer starts slow paced and becomes faster, in order to build up tension throughout, whilst building up to a climax. For example, in the Alice in Wonderland trailer, the beginning shots are commonly long, to show the fancy dresses and scenery which contrasts to the rest of the film due to the dark and eerie mood that is created. By having the beginning shots slower and building up the pace it creates more of an atmosphere

EDITING

Usually a film will have more than one trailer made, with different sections of the film edited together. There is always an official full trailer which lasts sometime between 1.30 -2 minutes, but often you will find, especially in horror, action or thriller films, they have shorter 10 second trailers which help build hype and will just have a short clip which may or may not have the film title shown.

TRAILER LENGTH

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Codes & conventions of a film trailer

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