What is a trailer?
Trailers refers to short previews of a piece of content, such as a movie trailer, which demonstrates scenes and the general plot and mood of a piece of media, in order to garner interest.
What makes an effective trailer?
The main intention of film trailer is to inform its audience about what is going to be in the film.
There are many things that should be taken into consideration when trying to make the trailer effective; and depending on the genre that is chosen for the movie, there are different codes and conventions each genre goes by.
- What to include?
First off all, snippets of the movie has to be squeezed into a tight space of only 2-3 minutes. You have to include the best parts that will sell the movie, without giving the whole plot away; otherwise it may just look boring, and the audience will not be interested.
The clips that are shown should grab the audience´s attention and build up tension and excitement. This can be done through the use or mise-en scene, sound, camerawork and editing.
- Genre and colour
Most, if not all trailers use colours that fit with their genre, so that the audience would be aware what sorts of movie it will be.
(Example 1 ROM-COM Colours)
For example, if the genre of the film is going to be a Rom-Com, there are usually vey bright colours, usually consisting of ´girly´colours such as pink, purple, baby blue and other pastel colours.
(Example 2 Horror Colours)
But on the other hand, if the genre of the film is going to be a horror, the colours are more likely to be a dark and plain, such as white, black, grey and red, to set a cold, dark atmoshere.
- Sound
Sound also has to be used effectively. Normally, action movies use lots of pleonastic sound, to emphasise things such as explosions and gun shots. This will automatically grab the viewer´s attention.
Horror movies usually have some sort of tension building music, such as piano chime or a drum beat.
Voiceovers are also commonly used in trailers to give a narrative to the plot and make it quicker and easier to understand what is going on, but a more effective trailer should win over an audience menber through their use of dialogue.
- Who to include
Trailers always include their USP´s (Unique Selling Point) and for mos block busters´this is usually their well known, bankable actor/actress.
These are included so that if a viewer sposts an actor that they really enjoy watching, they will be more like to go and see the film.
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