Evaluation of our Research

Today I asked many of my peers a few easy questions about a trailer that we could be making. Most of the response was positive and were helpful in coming up with good ideas in what to create.

Q- What do you like to see in a trailer?
The answers were as such, Good voice over, Amazing music, Good actors and Actresses, cinematography, Word Of Mouth, Excitment and if its interesting. These are a few evaluations I have taken from people.

Q- What makes you want to see a movie?
Here are the answers of many, Adverts, Good reviews, Trailers, Word of Mouth and Action made all the people in my class want to watch movies.

Q- What makes a bad trailer?
Here are the answers, Cringe movie, Bad actors, Sequals, Cheesy, Giving away the plot to easily.
Many of these respones came immediatly which shows that my peers knew already what to say and had a clear image on the way it should be made.

Mood Board

Today we completed our mood board. Here we stuck pictures of different pictures that reprsesnt the styles we want to use in our trailer. And how we want to keep it while we start casting as well.

In this mood board we used magazines and other images like newspapers and printouts to produce the board.

The next trailer that I am going to discuss is Keeping the Faith. This film was made in the year of 2000 and it stars Ben Stiller, Edward Norton and Jenna Elfman as the 3 main characters.

A basic explination of what happens in the trailer is 2 best friends meet up with their childhood best friend. The guy that wasn't told that she was coming to visit them was jealous that he wasn't the one the she had chosen to call to say she was coming. We could see this by the shot not moving on to something else as fast as it does throughout the rest of the trailer, creating an awkward silence. There is a difference in story from this one and our film idea. This is that in our story there is 1 girl that is playing 2 guys at the same time where as in the trailer above there is 1 girl that 2 best friends are interested in but she chooses 1 of them. She tells one of the characters that she is in love with the other one 2:09 mins in to the trailer and you can see that he does not exactly react well to this 2:13 mins in when he punches his friend that she has fallen for.

Although after watching this trailer you have a very good idea of things that happen, it still makes you want to go and see the film to see how they got to that finishing point, i.e. events that happen along the way, and to see how it ends as there could be a twist in the story that isn't given away in the trailer.

Finally one of the things that I have discovered when researching the films success etc I found that people were unhappy about the cast. For example in the comment area on youtube for the trailer there are people asking why someone would choose those particular actors for the roles. This made me realise how important it is for us to cast our trailer with people that can really play the roles better than anyone else we could use. If something like having the wrong people playing the parts can be such a big influence on the trailer alone then the chances are there will be less people going to see the film.

Related Videos

The trailer above is for the film Twilight Eclipse which was released in 2010. The reason I have chosen to write about this particular trailer is because the story line that we are trying to deliver is very similar.

The basic story of this traileruis a a love complication and as the girl is in love with 2 guys and she dosen't know what to do because of other factors that change the choices she can make. In our trailer we are hoping to have a girl that is essentially interested in 2 guys but she doesn't seem to care about the outcome. This is the difference between the trailer and the one that we are hoping to create.

The trailer is set mostly in the depths of the forest and the establishing shot right at the beginning of this trailer is an upwards tilt from a birds eye view of the trees to show quite how vast the forest is. In all of the mid shots there is endless scenery emphasising their location. The trailer in itself is not edited as fast as others that I have seen but there isn't any points in the trailer that you feel it is dragging on. It manages to change between all the characters in the love triangle and the other effecting factors in the story enough to keep you interested. Although there are a lot of mid shots not all of them are static. For example 15 seonds in to the trailer the mid shot is captured while the camera is being lowered down in a particular direction. Another variation of mid shots is just after that at 18 seconds in where the camera seems to be moving backwards (zooming out). The final shot that I am going to talk about that caught my eye is a very slight low angle mid shot, 1:06 mins in, to show the dramatic jump from the character. The slow motion of the shot makes it, for me, the most powerful shot in the trailer beacuse it draws you in and you dont feel you can take your eyes off it!

Personally I feel that the one element that is done best in this trailer is the sound. The soundtrack is one that fits the somber mood that is set as the girl has to make such a hard decision; However at the same time it also brings tension. When the part comes where the bad character comes the sound stops and there is an eery quietness before the voice of the girl asks a question with a very nervous voice. The sound then picks up again with a much more up tempo rhythm that makes you very on edge as you think something drastic is brewing or is about to happen. This to me sound is a very crucial part of a trailer as it plays a huge role in setting the mood. What I think also helps to add to the dramatic mood is the music clash in the music when there is a sudden change of camera shot to a close up to emphasise the emotion on a character. For example this can be found at 1:11 mins in to the trailer.

There are some visual effects but the trailer is pretty basic in the sense that it uses music, acting and a powerful story line to keep people drawn in. However when the titles of when it is being released, the name of the film etc are played there is a very clever CGI of very, thick, black clouds moving quickly behind the titles that help again to create the dark mood. For example behind the release date, 58 seconds in.

"Going The Distance" trailer 1

The trailer above is of the newest release in 2010 called " Going the Distance" This movie has a good cast with the leading Actress Drew Barrymore and Justin Long playing the lead Male role. This romantic comedy will leave audiences laughing out loud. The trailer of Going the Distance incredibly entertaining as it reflects what the movie wants the audience to experience the funny side of the long distance relationships. The transitions between the scenes is a big boeing 747 jet going across the scene which again grabbed my attention because it made it clear to me about the distance of the relationships. The editing of the trailer was smooth and flowing to give the important and funny moments of the movie. The editing also includes a few split screens of the main characters name with a white background and the names in black. This signifies the comic aspect of the movie with a touch of romance. Also the story telling is done through a few titles that explain the story in detail in what there is to come next.

The cinematography side of the trailer is pretty simple which includes many shot reaction shots of people having conversations about there relationships. The angles that stick out are the mid range shots of the main characters sitting in the airport together hugging each other is a vital moment in the story line before the Girl leaves. There are also a few establishing shots of city's like San Fransico and New York. For the representation of this there is a split screen at one point of the trailer that shows the major land marks of these cities, for example the San Fransico Bridge and the New York Skyscrapers.

The sound added to the trailer was melodic romantic music. This gave the sense of love as it sooths the audience to be involved in the movie. At the end of the trailer we see a woman bitting into corn, the bit is enhanced to add to the comedy effect beacuse of the previous night of what happened. What we want to incorporate looking at this video is the transitions and the shot reaction shots. There is no voice over which we will be looking at to place in the video. But I liked the idea of the characters narrating the story for us. This gives the sense of the movie of what is in store for the Audience.

Genre Choice Inspiration

When choosing the genre for my movie trailer I thought about all the things that I had watched recently on television, whether it was TV or a film.

I had been watching a TV series that is based on a film called Friday Night Lights. It is about an school American Football team in Texas that the whole town base their lives around. The basic story line is that every Friday night everyone in the town goes to watch the team play in their stadium. Although it is a school team the stadium is able to hold tens of thousands of people and football is everything to them. The twists in relationships between the characters are incredibly deep and manage to grip you!

I am hoping to do something along the same lines as this in our project. So to conclude, the inspiration for the genre of the project came from Friday Night Lights which is a TV programme even though our project is a film trailer.

First Idea Of Trailer

Today in our media class, Gregor and I discussed the ideas of our new trailer. From switching ideas from Sports to Horror through to Action we decided to stick on to a Romantic Comedy/Drama genre for our trailer.
Our story goes a bit like this, One beautiful girl has a boy friend who is a rugby player in school, she secretly has an affair with a footballer player. The boys at first hate each other for they have done to her, but eventually become friends and gang up on the girl and playing pranks on her and try and make her life terrible in school. These events lead to many comic things happening around campus.
This idea is not particularly based on a movie, but we will add many trailers of different movies to highlight what we want.