Choose one trailer that you think successfully fulfils the purpose

of a trailer (to capture the audience attention and

encourage them to watch the film) and evaluate how it is able

to do this

Research and PlanningQuestion 8

American Sniper (2015)

Camera Shots

• A slow zoom upwards is shown at 0:10 leading to an eye line shot. This allows tension to be created between the audience and the movie trailer as they are able to see the main characters reactions. This is shown in real time.

Editing

• The trailer is mainly slow paced. This allows the audience to have a perspective in the life of an American sniper which encourages them to watch the film giving them a new experience.

• Excitement is created throughout the end of the trailer by the use of fast editing between the different scenes used. This allows less attention to be placed on the content, which makes the audience want to watch the trailer again, creating more talk about it.

• Flash back scenes are added during the editing. This allows more information to be giving to the audience in aspects of the main characters live. As the main focus of this movie is shown to be military/action, the audience is left wondering about his past life making them want to continue to watch the movie.

• These scenes are also shown during the character having to make a decision about shooting a child at 1:03, which makes the audience doubt the true intentions of the character

Sound

• There is no soundtrack added to this movie trailer; which creates suspense as most of the scenes are silent. This allows for more dialogue to be used which lets the audience into the shoes of the character.

• When pace picks up with the ‘action’ a sound effect of a heartbeat is added. This allows the audience to empathise with the character, based on the tackling situation he is in. With this empathy, the audience is encouraged to watch the full movie

On Screen Text

• From the offset we see the production logos. Due to Warner Brothers being shown, this already gives the audience a format of the movie already based on past releases.

• Clint Eastwood is shown to be the director. This cam help the release of the movie with audience as they will have probably already seen Jersey Boys and True Crime. Clint Eastwood is also an actor which creates a major fan base

Overall

• I think this trailer successfully fulfils the purpose of a trailer. They do this by;– Only showing one particular scene in the movie

which creates tension and enigma as this shown different conventions to other action trailers.

– The fact that only one scene is shown means the theatrical trailer is withdrawing a lot of information from the audience, a lot like a teaser trailer. This makes them want to watch the movie to get all of the information

– Sound is used effectively in this trailer which creates suspense. The lack of sound allows the audience to focus more on the content.