Trailer Research - Essay

Trailer Research - Explore the genre and conventions of your chosen media text. How do you plan to adhere to or develop these conventions?

The previous trailers which I have looked at will be extremely helpful in deciding the style, tone, USP's and if any, what would make our film different from others of a similar genre. The chosen genre, among me and my two partners, is that of crime thriller, which will be based in present day London. The location which we will be using is the central London area, including Chinatown as can be seen in Hummingbird (see below) and Welcome to The Punch (see below also). By setting our trailer here, we felt that we will make the task slightly harder for ourselves but by doing this we will have the opportunity to make a professional, glossy looking trailer which rivals those of my inspirations. Although we wish to differentiate our trailer, and in turn final picture, from others in the genre; there are some set conventions/tropes which the genre must adhere to to make our product part of the genre and a regulation trailer, as while providing the viewer with a trailer like Memento may be effective, it is also very difficult to do and get right.

One on the main conventions of the genre is the need for a good setting, whether that be the glossy, bright and beautiful setting of a nighttime London, the dark, dismal streets of Chinatown through a CCTV camera, or the fictitious world of Sin City; one must be able to differentiate their own location and the use of  it from films which have come before. There are a variety of shots, from establishing shots in higher budget mainstream films to Hummingbird's use of a lower angle to establish the scene. By doing this the directors provide the audience with either a "WOW" effect by showing the beauty of the city, or as in hummingbird, attempt to get the viewer to relate to the situation through the personal, eye level, grounded establishing shots and close ups to open the trailer. The latter of these is probably the least effective, however will be the one which me and my partners will have to use due to our lack of money and time for aviation or ability to fly. Something along the lines of Sin City's shots may be more plausible and effective, with one showing Jessica Alba on a balcony overlooking the city and another showing a ground level shot of another female character with the city in all its glory behind her. By doing this we do not long associate the characters with the location, but we can expand on narrative tone and character development while introducing the viewer to the setting; something entirely necessary in such a short amount of time and with our non-existent budget. The aforementioned association of the characters to the location is also an important point, with their mannerisms and attire allowing the viewer to characterize aspects of the film.

Seeing as we have a limited use of location however, due to the aforementioned lack of aerial shots and being forced to set the film in the present day, we must then make up for this through the use of lighting and mise-en-scene which is another trope of the crime thriller genre. When done well, the lighting can define a film. This can be seen in all three of the new series of Batman films, and even further if you take the trilogy as a whole. The dark, musty orange colour which is associated with the first film "Begins" moves towards the bright  city lights of Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises - showing not only an increase in budget size, popularity and digital technology but also an increase in the power of Batman and in turn the Bruce Wayne company. Because of this, we will have to stick to tropes of the more realistic side of the crime-thriller genre, emulating films such as Drive, A History of Violence, and Only God Forgives. The two Ryan Gosling feature length productions were directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, whose cinematography is more subtle and slightly more effective than that of Frank Miller or Tim Burton. What differentiates Refn from other directors of a similar caliber is his distinctive and original use of a cities lighting in unconventional ways. Through doing this, the connotations of the colour which is prominent throughout the trailer can be analysed, and the subtle impliations of the colour may be subconsciously recognized by even a passive audience member. As in Drive and Only God Forgives, the use of neon reds, pinks, and oranges represent danger while also suggesting a sense of night life or privacy.Through this vibrant colour pallet, close ups, mid shots and establishing shots become more and more effective as they display more of the range of vibrancy in the shot. This presents an aesthetically pleasing look to a shot which may have previously been dull and bland - enticing audiences all the more.

Heavily related to the lighting and setting of the aforementioned trailers is their use of iconography and imagery in order to subtly portray a message to the more active members of the audience. Usually associated with cars, lighting, guns and explosions, Frank Miller's Sin City manages to out across the implications of iconography much more slyly. Once again using colour, by giving each character their own shade of either red, blue, yellow or green, that action can be analysed along side the character in order to assess what Miller is attempting to show the character as. For example, Jessica Alba has red lips, leading the audience to believe that her purpose within the picture as an object of desire, however this may be oversimplifying the matter as due to the films nature, the colour could also connote danger, or even more ironically, underestimation. More obviously, in other films previously mentioned, the use of attire, props and shot type relate Welcome to The Punch to a high budget thriller, Gangster Squad to the sub-genre of gangster films and Eastern Promises to a more gritty, close to home, graphic thriller. In our production, we will have to emulate some of the above iconography and shot types in order to make obvious 1) the genre of our film and 2) what sort of audience we are attempting to cater for. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the development of character in the trailer. During a 2 minute teaser, this is much harder to do than in my previous year making a film opening, however the conventions of how this is done differs upon the trailer's country of origin. British films usually use sound bridges, a la Eastern Promises, Welcome to The Punch and Hummingbird, while the stereotypical voice-over's of American trailers attempt to establish a characters identity through a narrator describing them, from what is meant to be assumed as an omniscient perspective. In terms of camera work, the introductory shot is usually an extreme close up of the character in what is assumed as their natural environment, however V for Vendetta turns this on its head due to its futuristic setting, leading a viewer to not know what natural is to the character. This is a prime example of character development through sound instead of shot type; "People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people" as well as in Welcome to The Punch, setting up James McAvoy's obsession with Mark Strong through the quote "The only lasting thing about Jacob Stoneward should be his prison sentence." There is a definite conflict between how characters are developed in Romance, Drama and Sci-Fi than Crime-Thriller however, which voice-overs being less abundant and diegetic sound becoming the norm. In the making of our trailer, this is something which we should definitely adhere to.

In conclusion, the film genre which we have chosen has many conventions which are necessary in both differentiating it from other genre's and utilizing the popular tropes of the genre in order to increase audience size and interest in the film. These include the setting and lighting of the film, which can be accentuated through the different types of shot which are used making the product more aesthetically pleasing, or the more subtle and personal character development which is done in tandem with the iconography of the film, again made obvious through camera work and editing. I order for me and my partners to make what would be a 'successful' crime thriller trailer we would have to conform to these expectations while at the same time putting our own spin on them in an attempt to appeal to our target audience in a way no other film in the genre does. By taking aspects of all these inspirations we should be able to do this, however one must remember that these inspirations are the work of cinema genius and to even replicate a percent of one of these trailers/films would be an achievement in itself.