Analysis of Trailer Genres

'The Mechanic' is a action movie. The music is constant throughout the trailer apart from a few pauses to create suspense. The music is very rocky which makes the audience feel pumped and excited. The music also goes in time with the action seen in the video. As seen at 7seconds in where the gun is fired in time to the music. This gives the audience more adrenaline and a bigger rush which in turns gets them excited to see the film which is the intention of a trailer.  The beginning 30 seconds of this trailer has fast cuts and the music stays pretty much the same pace. You see explosions and murder in the first part which wets the appetite for the audience and makes them continue watching.
The next part of the trailer has the music change and the editing get slower. This is because you start to hear dialogue and get part of the narrative of the story. The music is slower and starts to build. There a few sharp cuts but this is to keep the audience pumped otherwise they will get un-interested. The audience still witness action and just past the halfway point of the trailer a gun shot silences the music for a second and the quick paced editing is back. All of this creates tension and excitement in the audience and keeps them watching and wanting more and by cutting quickly without giving too much away keeps narrative enigma and will persuade the audience to go to the cinema.
There are a few Text cue cards that have special effects on them. They are very dark and are constantly moving. Again this creates suspense by cutting away from the action and giving the audience a breather from the action.
All in all and action trailer has rocky music, fast cut paces until they tell the audience part of the narrative. They are full of explosions and fast paced scenes. This makes the audience get pumped and anxious to see the movie fulfilling its purpose successfully.

'The Hangover' is a comedy film. The music starts instantly and is an upbeat rock/pop song that the audience are familiar with. The first scene the audience see is a comedy gag and the music stops on the punch line. This emphases the punch line and makes it stick in the audiences memory more. This is constant throughout the trailer. Within the first 20 secs of the trailer the idents of Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures is seen. This is because the audience know these makers very well and see them as a mark of quality and know it will be a good film. The idents are only shown quickly as they are already well known and allows for more comedy gags to be in the trailer. The first few jokes you hear are actually also telling the narrative. They are clips from the beginning of the film, so as well as already getting the audience to laugh and hear more they are also taking note of the narrative which will explain  more of the trailer. However it doesn't give away too much and still creates enigma by putting fast cut editing in at around 35 seconds. This is so the audience only get a taster of what has happened so it creates appeal and will make the audience want to go see it. There is then a fade and the editing is slow again, this creates humour in itself as the setting is a wreck and the audience don't know what happened. A comedy trailer is also often full of colour as this keeps an audience member happy and more likely to laugh.  A comedy trailer is mainly full of comedy gags and long scenes of a joke.  The purpose of a comedy trailer is to create laughs and some enigma to make the audience go watch the film. The way a comedy trailer does this is by cutting the music on the gags, filling the trailer full of jokes, and some quick cuts between different funny scenes. This is turn leaves the audience wanting more laughs and therefore going to the cinema. A comedy trailer also ends on one final joke as seen here. This is to make sure the audience are left talking and laughing about the film and therefore hopefully going to the cinema.

'The Happening' is a horror film. This trailer starts with people stopping suddenly on a train. It then fades out to a black screen and you hear a girl saying ' were we supposed to stop here' the music only starts to build after 30 secs. This is a instant convention of a horror to the audience and if they enjoy these type of films then they will be instantly watching. By doing this it also creates enigma as straight away the audience do not know what is going on. Horror trailers are often dark as well and most are set at night time. This also causes enigma and instantly installs fear as from a young age humans are afraid of the dark and the film industry plays onto this. A horror trailer constantly makes enigma. In this the audience see a clip of a police officer standing and looking about, it then cuts to a fade and cuts back to him dead on the floor. This causes the audience to start ponding about what has happened and cause enigma. The fast pace cutting also cause the audience to jump and start to become startled and scared. The trailer also has cue cards , simple with black background and white writing coming slowly forward. These cue cards are telling the audience about the makers which are producers of other horror films. This keeps the audience watching as they are famous well known films and therefore the audience expect another good film. In this trailer you have part of the dialogue of the film telling you about 'the attack', this is going on while fast cuts of the film are in place. This isn't always associated with all horrors it depends on the narrative. However the fast cuts are associated and are always obvious in horror trailers. There are also a lot of fades in this trailer where you can not see what is happening but can hear what is happening, like people falling to the ground but no actual footage. This scares the audience as well as intrigues them. A horror trailer is supposed to inflict fear and make the audience curious they do this by high pitched music that is slow paced but with fast cutting and long fades. The trailers sometimes slow down and then cut very suddenly which cause more fear than fast cuts. These type of trailers often leave the audience wanting more and slightly scared.

In all a trailer is designed to make the audience want to see more, this is obviously different for different genres but they all have the one purpose and all succeed very well. I need to take these ideas into my own trailer and hopefully produce something which clearly shows all these ideas and conventions.

Magazine Cover

In today's lesson we were practising our Adobe Photoshop CS5 skills and were learning how to place part of an image over the Masthead. This was a new skill for me, however adding text in and adding effects to the text were not. This is my attempt at my first magazine front cover. This magazine covers target audience is female aged between 20 and 30. For my magazine cover it will be aimed at men as well as women but around a similar age. Therefore the colours and the subject matter will be different but this is how my first attempt went! :) 

Codes & Conventions

Magazines

In my first Print lesson we discussed the codes and conventions of magazine front covers. We were spilt into groups and were giving a magazine each and had to pick out the features on the front that are commonly there.

We were given the FILM magazine as seen below. We also analysed the features of this particular front cover magazine of why they chose it, e.g. the bright colours and large fonts to draw peoples attention to pick it up off the shelves.

The Conventions that we noticed are common with all magazines are:
-Mastheads
-Bar codes
-Sub-headings
-Large Featured Heading
-One large centred image & smaller images
-Bottom Section 'PLUS'
-Top strip of Extras
-Price, date and website

Codes are anything visual within the media product that creates understanding. Such as:
-Colours
-Images
-Fonts ( Serif , which is with hooks and San Serif, which is without hooks.)

In this lesson we also discussed the layout of the magazine front cover as it all has a particular place because of magazine stands as parts of the magazine are often covered, and it also has particular places to draw a potential buyers attention to pick it up and hopefully buy it.

Film Trailers


The conventions of a film trailer are:

-  The trailers include short clips of the key parts of the film. They tend to not give away too crucial parts of the plot. Some trailers appear "bad" as they have given away too much of the plot.

- Actors names appear early on in the trailer. This is to attract the audience and keep their focus on the trailer.

- Director names or "makers of" also appear early on or mid way in the trailers. Again this keeps the audience's attention by recognition of previous films that the directors or makers have made.

- The title of the film appears at the end of the trailer and is often accompanied by the release date.

- Music is usually constant throughout. The music helps to set the genre and tone of the film. It also helps to build suspense and ultimately achieving the trailers goal of making the audience want more.

- There are often on screen text moments and these tend to set the genre of film and also help the audience identify with the film by using tag lines, actors names and the film title.

The codes are anything visual that helps to create meaning, as mentioned above. So in film trailers the code would be seen via; the font, music, tag lines and the title.

An example would easily be the Horror genre compared to Romance.

The font in horrors will tend to be serif as these appear more jaggeded and tend to connote cutting. The colour of the text will be dark colours or colours associated with blood such as red, this allows the audience to identify this with horror, where as in a Romance film the font will be san serif and bright, light colours such as pink, yellow and black. This gives a sense of reality and the colours such as pink are stereotypical of romance films. Music is a clear indicator of genre as the codes are strongly different between films. In a romance film the music will be light and soft where as a horror will be deep and suspenseful. The music helps set a mood which helps the audience see what genre it is. The tag lines and title will including words that are linked with that genre, for horror it will be things like, saw, cut, stab, death, dark, scary etc... and romance will be love, romance, playful, joy etc..

A2 Media

In my lessons for coursework I will be production a two minute trailer to my chosen film and I will also be producing a movie magazine front cover featuring my film and also a poster to advertise my film. Before i can start producing these pieces i will need to chose a film genre and come up with the film synopsis. A film title will also be needed as this will be featuring on all three of my pieces.

After I have chosen my film genre, synopsis and title then i will need to think of what equipment and programs i will use. I will probably use the same cameras that i used last year, the Canon XL camera, as these cameras are easily accessible via the college and produce a quality image. Along with my video footage i will need to do pre production such as, a story board, a script and other pieces along with it to build the structure to the trailer. I will be using Final Cut Pro to edit my video footage. I briefly used this last year to edit my two minute opening sequence along with three other girls in my group. I have a basic knowledge in using this program but i do not feel comfortable in using it to its full advantage. I only was given a brief lesson in how to use, for example how to put in video transitions and how to cut clip segments. So i will need to refine my skills in this program to produce a better quality trailer.
In the print production i will need to use various programs to produce these.  I will mainly be using Adobe Photoshop CS5. I have worked a lot with Adobe Photoshop CS4 which is very similar. I used it throughout my GCSE. I produced a CD album cover which involved cutting a image out and placing it onto another, i also used it in another piece of coursework for GCSE in which i decided to make a website for a made up artist. This involved designing each individual page in Photoshop, i had to cut images and place them, make them smaller or larger, changing the colors and putting in effects on the images. I then placed all of these in Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 but i will not need to use this in my coursework this year. In this year i may have to use Adobe Illustrator and Indesign. I have not previously worked with either of these programs and have no knowledge or skills on how to use these. I will be starting from scratch with these programs and will need to research how to use it and receive help from my tutors.

I am looking forward to producing all three pieces of coursework and hope to use my knowledge i already have to produce good quality images and convey my films genre and appeal to my target audience effectively. I am also looking forward to working with new programs as these may be more useful for me with my new ideas for my coursework.