Analysing a trailer

The Hills Have Eyes 2

I have decided to watch the horror movie 'The Hills Have Eyes 2' and I am going to evaluate the trailer through five set questions.

The title of the film is shown at the end of the trailer. This is because the director wants you to be excited and wants to give you a taste of his work before he decides to invite you in and find out the name of the film.

In this trailer, we are not told who is starring in the film. This could be because the trailer is used more for visual terms instead of reading blocks of writing.

From this film we see quite a lot of action in the quick rapid shots. We already get an idea that there would be a lot of action because many weapons are involved. Before each shot is changed there is a pause of a blackout. This is because each shot shows the best parts in the film, and this wants to be portrayed in a way that each of the shot excites you so the shots are not prolonged.

At the first half of the trailer, there is no music used, only sounds such as statics from the radio, the sounds of army cars, a hollow sound in the background to represent the isolation and the dialogue between the military officers. In the second half of the trailer, we get sounds again but we also have a song played in the background - Insect Eyes by Devendra Banhart - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmDV5lYjWo - This song makes the whole film trailer thriller even more scary. This is because of the lyrics used in the song. It unsettles vibes encircling around your mind and sends chills through your spine. The song creates a more creepy and haunting atmosphere. These obvious clues shows us that the film is based around the gruesome horror genre.

The film trailer does not have a voice over. This could be because they want to create a sense of realism and they want the viewers to focus on the dialogue between the actors as they are delivering to us the narrative of the story-line.

The speed of the trailer is much more quick and snapy compared to clips we would see from a film. This is because the trailer aims to capture all the best bits together but in short clips so that you are more urged to know what happens. The speed through the trailer stays the same except at the end. This could be because the trailer wants you to engage in what is happening.

In the very last frame of the trailer, we are shown the promotional details of the Fox Film Corporation and also the website to this corporation. This for promotional purpose, to create more publicity towards the corporation.

Trailers are more effective in making you want to see a film then the poster because instead of looking at a still picture you are looking at moving images, and you get a better idea about the film in watching the trailer as it goes into more depth. Although creative pictures do captures viewers eyes very quickly, and these are the reason why people then want to look at the film trailer.

You would expect to see this trailer before watching a horror film in the cinema's because it is aiming to lure in the fans of the horror genre to watch the film. As it is rated 18, it would not be shown in between breaks of TV Programs unless it is a late show.

Conventions and Trailers

A question we asked ourselves was 'why do people go and see movies'. From this question I summed up some simple answers such as people go to see movies because they are interested in a certain genre, because of the actors used in the movie, because of the narrative - storyline, because of a unique selling point such as a movie being in 3D and film reviews.
Below as a class we focused on three different movies to see what speciality each trailer has which captures the audiences attention.I have evaluted the trailers in the movies and shown the conventions each trailer uses.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD

From these screen grabs you can see that the movie has a blend of both genres, this is comedy and romance. You can also see that the film features video game animation which gives the film an extra convention to it which makes it unique as this is not often seen in many movies. The animations also shows that the film is suitable for a younger audience.

Giving the directors name in the film trailer adds onto why people go and see movies. If a previous movie was watched by a specific director and the film was good, then viewers would want to see more films produced by this director. Therefore during the trailer, directors are basically selling the movie as there name is used as a credit towards the film. In this trailer we see two movie names 'Hot Fuzz' and 'Shaun of the Dead' which are both hit comedy movies.


Trailers also include the title of the movie towards the end and a release date. Although, this trailer has a 'coming soon' release date instead. When this is shown, you can also see below that the trailer includes information such as the website, credits to Universal Studies and the record name of who made the soundtrack. This is so that the film can create more activity designed to rouse public interest in other things which still connect to the film.

Scott Pilgrim VS The World Trailer

When watching the trailer, you realize that quick rapid shots are used and this makes the pace of the trailer more faster which keeps the viewer interested and focused on what is going on. The rapid shots captures the best parts of the film. Non-diegetic music adds onto the pace of the trailer and moves things faster. Along with the music and rapid quick shots, there is a dialogue which gives us a clue to the narrative so audience know what the film is based around.

MY DOG TULIP FILM TRAILER

I looked at another movie trailer which is much different from the first. This trailer has much longer shots and gives more of a understanding about what is happening. There is a voice over on the trailer throughout explaining the narrative of the story which develops character. Towards the end, the title of the film is shown but there are much more credits about the involvement of this film. There is a more play around with the conventions because of the different genre.

Concept of Horror Films

On Tuesday 14th, we brainstormed concepts around the horror production on A3 paper. We were asking ourselves questions such as 'What is horror?' and what are the influences to a good horror film. To sum up we asked ourselves questions about setting, audience, influences, props, music and characters which we then individually will research on to help us with our horror movie production. Doing this will help us as a group to come up to what would makes a horror movie and what makes a good horror movie.

I did a different brainstorm from my team mates because then we all can share our different ideas and extend on our movie production.

Concept on Prezi

Looking at titles of films during class time

In Mr Rosen's class we looked at film titles from different trailers. From clues from the film titles we were asked to evaluate what the images show. We Looked at the style of the fonts used to give us an idea of what the film is about.

CASE 39

This style of font gives us an idea that the film could be a spooky/ghostly/horror/thriller genre with the use of the classic font and glowing text.

DUE DATE

The style of font used for this film 'Due Date' is a modern font and is used in block capital letters. This type of font would make it difficult to conclude what genre this film may be but some choices could be comedy or a family film.

LET ME IN

When we see this style of font we may straight away assume that the film genre could be based around horror or thriller. This is because of the use of red used for the title and a faint use of blood at the background of the font.

THE AMERICAN

This style of font gave us an idea that the film may be to do with the American culture or something patriotic. After when we looked at the title which is in block captial letters we saw an silhouette, and this is a man holding a gun so therefore the idea of the genre has changed and now it may be a action film.

What is more important images or words?

The question 'what is more important images or words' may have a lot of different arguments towards it when it comes to an answer. Images are used to show something while words are usually used to describe something. I think that images have more significance because when referring to a movie poster, unlike words, the images give you more of an idea what the film is about. This can be referred to the evaluation of film titles shown above. When we looked at the film title (words) we had to guess what the film was about and what the genre was by just reading it, but when we looked at the images, as in the whole movie poster we straight away had an idea what the film genre was. Although, my evaluation above has somewhat given us an idea what the film genre is, based on how the words look but this then also comes into the content of imagery because of the creativeness of how the words have been edited.

First Lesson of Year 13

On 8th September, in Mr Mazzochi's lesson we had chosen our groups which we will start our horror movie production on. I had chosen to work in a group of three with my following team mate Rema Kadir: http://remakadir13.blogspot.com and Naresa Azemi: http://naresaazemi.blogspot.com

We decided it will be better to work as a group of three because we all have different abilities in media which will benefit our production. Our contribution towards this production would both be equal as we both have abilites such as ICT skills, creativity, organization and overall team work. This would therefore help us to successfully create a thorough production.