1. Film Trailer
In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media
products?

2. Film Trailer Definition
• A series of short extracts from a film, used to advertise it in a
cinema or on television.
• Trailers have been used worldwide to advertise and publish
the film to the world audience to promote the film and
persuade the audience to go watch the film. This is always
mainly don’t by leaving an element of surprise or a cliffhanger
in the trailer that will make the viewer thinking “what will
happen next?”.

3. Film trailers – Forms and Conventions
• Normal trailers range from around 1-3 minutes in time, and consist of
about 30+ shots.
• Before planning my trailer I did some background research into other film
trailers that had a relatable relevance to what I was planning to do, this
gave me a good insight as to what would be good to use and the ideas of
shots and mise on scene that is used in a comedy based genre.
• It was important that the trailers I analysed had relevance to my target
market audience too.
• The kind of trailers I analysed which were based around my trailer were
trailers such as, Stepbrothers, The New kid, The superhero movie and a
series of spoof short films to get a jist of what kind comedic effect and
props I could use in my trailer that would suit an audience of my
specificity.

4. Film trailers – Forms and Conventions
• I choose to do a normal trailer rather then a teaser trailer as I felt that comedy
trailers needed to be normal length of around 2 minutes as this would impact
on the fact that it was a comedy and make the audience laugh from the start
before even watching the film, (making it more probable that they would want
to go watch the actual film).
• The thing about my trailer compared to most comedy trailers is that its quite
linear unlike most comedy's which like to show most of their comedic footage
in a non chronological order.
• As most comedy films do, I also started of my trailer doing a voiceover, this
although explains the storyline also adds a sense of comedy, as the tone of
voice can determine what kind of genre the film is.
• The main aspect of all comedy films is the music that is inserted into the
trailer. The music in a comedy must be choose carefully and will determine the
quality of the film and the likeliness that the audience will go to watch the
film. In my trailer I analysed previous trailers and choose music which I think
would be suited towards a comedy trailer which seemed to work and fit in
well.

5. The Theory of Trailers
• Product – the film needs to be clearly identifiable for example the genre,
stars, specific effects and style.
• Publicity – star interview, ‘making of’ documentaries, reviews and profiles,
news stories.
• Promotion – print advertising, trailers, websites, merchandising (cd’s toys,
video games)
• Placing – the film has to released at the right time.
• Viral marketing refers to the marketing techniques that use pre existing
social network, it can be word of mouth or through the internet. Viral
promotions may take the form of video clips. Interactive flash games,
images or even text messages.
• Theory of narratives – The narrative is the way the story is related and
connects. Using those connections we , as an audience, are able to make
our own interpretations. Our interpretations are affected by our
experiences of reality and by influence from other texts.

6. The Theory of Trailers
• When we look at the conventions of a narrative we look at:
• Genre – by fitting into a genre, the audience knows what to expect from a
film and are able to predict its outcome.
• Character – The type of characters presented also allows for some
prediction of what they will do.
• Form – Allowing the audience a foreknowledge of the general structure of
the film
• Time – Narratives do not take place in ‘real time’.
(we use tem to help interpret this text)

7. The Theory of Trailers
• Propps Narrative theory is based on his analysis of folk tales and legends from
various countries. He arrived at the conclusion that the story of any music video is
built up following folk tale guidelines as in there are always certain ‘types’ of
characters, he narrowed it down to these 8:
• -Hero – Who is on a quest(search)
• -Villain – The opposing foe to the hero
• -Donor – Character who provides a tool(s) to the hero character
• -Dispatcher – Who starts the hero on his quest/way
• -False Hero – Character who tries to divert the hero from his quest
• -Helper – self explanatory, helps the hero
• -Princess – who is the reward for the hero
• -Father – who rewards the hero for his efforts

8. Film Conventions of my Trailer
• Two main characters , myself and Tom who play 2 students at school. Tom
being the nerdy kid who's trying to be popular, and myself being the new
cool kid who’s new to the school.
• Use of comedic music throughout my trailer, a variety of different songs
with high tempo which is the better for the genre of a comedy trailer,
including artist such as Drake, Dr Dre, Public Enemy and Rizzle Kicks.
• I have dropped in music behind the voiceover to add tension and comedy
to the scene, this will help the voiceover as well as the trailer.
• All my scenes have different series of times to add different effects on the
target audiences, I thought that if all shots were the same as 6 seconds or
less it would cause more tension and the audience would know what to
expect then leaving them wanting to know what happens next.