EVALUATION 5 - Trailer expectations

How have we made our trailer seem like a trailer? How did specific moments appeal to the target audience?

With our trailer, we used a continuous method of filming where events took place in chronological order, creating the story-like feel for audiences. This typically would not seem like a trailer as it is often that trailers are just a montage of different events (not making sense), however we managed to convert this by adding titles; by doing this we were breaking apart the continuity of the film, emphasising the trailer feel. 

Titles:

In a trailer, titles are extremely important in promoting the film but for us; particularly breaking apart the story-like feel and continuity of events. The first titles that we included were of the institutions which were only briefly revealed; in trailers the display of institutions is much shorter than those in the actual film as they focus alot more on displaying multiple events. Our next two titles are slogans for our film, which are briefly guiding audiences through the trailer. The first one is 'Sometimes our worst fears'; and the effect of this is that audiences are unaware of what is meant by that; also the use of the collective pronoun 'our' contributes to engaging audiences as they are making them feel a part of the trailer by using direct address. These title significantly broke apart the continuity of events in our trailer. Another title that we incorporated which is conventional of a trailer was the time of release stating that it was 'This Halloween'. This is important and recognisable in most trailers as it is a key piece of information that distributors want audiences to remember. Lastly, we displayed the Title of the film and the credits. In the majority of trailers, these tend to be at the end as they are again things that we want the audiences to remember. Most importantly is the name of the film which is 'Dawn'. This is the main thing that we want audiences to remember and is what audiences should know when it is released. This is conventional in most trailers and was something that we recognised when analysing other trailers prior to creating our own.

Camera:

In most trailers, the camera movement tends to be very fast-paced and this is due to the multiple events that are combined together. The reason for the fast-paced camera movement is also to engage audiences and keep them on the edge of there seats when in-taking all the events that the trailer distributes. In our trailer we have actually subverted to this when using quite slow-paced camera movement, however this was to convey our genre and create tension to which you would expect in the horror genre. In our trailer, we have used a range of different shots and angles including, mid shots revealing body language and actions, close ups, over the shoulder shots, mirror shots, POV, etc. All of these were effective in engaging audiences which is the general purpose of a trailer. We aimed to use as many different shots and angles as possible in our trailer in order to show the change of atmosphere and to create meaning. A specific moment in our trailer that we feel would be most appealing to audiences would be the change in camera movement where it became much more fast paced creating tension for the audiences and unexpected change causing them to question everything they have seen.

Editing:

Typical editing, expectations of a trailer involve a lot of fast-paced editing and jump cuts from different clips. In our trailer, we initially began using quite slow-paced editing where each clip slowly faded in and out creating quite a suspicious atmosphere; along with the slow, eerie music. When changing through the different clips we used the fade effect creating a connection rather than it being a solid cut. This is important in trailers as there tends to be alot of jump cuts between the different clips and it is most effective when this is done smoothly using the fade transition or any other. The fade effect after each clip is effective as it essentially closes the specific scene creating suspense as audiences will begin to question what is going to happen next. We used the dip to black transition between the first half of our trailer which is quite slow-paced and eerie - to the end of our trailer which is much more fast-fast paced and intense. This was effective as it was closing the scene making audience think that its the end when the sudden fade was the cause of another event to start which would exhilarate audiences. This is conventional of a trailer as we typically expect a complete change of scene and events to which we don't find much out about.


Overall we have made our own trailer seem like a trailer through the constant use of title's and the complete change of scene and events from the beginning to the end. The use of titles significantly breaks apart the story-like feel and the continuity making it feel more like a trailer. Also, the titles are effective in advertising the film which is what you often expect in a trailer.