CONVENTIONS OF TRAILERS

FILM PRODUCTION LOGO Usually within the first few seconds of the trailer, the film production logo

will be shown. The production company's reputation can benefit the film trailer because if they have seen another film from this production company the reputation will come to stand as they are good. It also creates an idea of the type of film the trailer is trying to sell. For example people will see a DreamWorks logo and know that it will have a big budget, and they have a reputation of making family friendly films.

FILM TITLE The film title is in every trailer, so you know which film it is you want to

watch and it is generally at the end of the trailer, so that the trailer can build up suspense and curiosity before showing the name if you are then already interested in the film and you are more likely to remember it. The font, of the title is very important to audiences, colouring and back drop are also usually a good clue as to the genre of the film. The Conjuring is evidently a horror, shown by its dark back ground and ominous white font. Whereas Bridget Jones’s Baby look more comedic and light hearted because of their bright colours and friendly font, whereas

BBFC AGE CERTIFICATION Any film released in the UK is awarded an age certification by the British

Board of Film Classification, and the age is shown towards the end of a film trailer. This provides a guideline for the target audience age, for example if the film is awarded a U certificate, its a family friendly film, and therefore you will get many children going to watch it. It also means that people younger than the age certificate won't be lead to think they can go watch the film in the cinema. Film certification is also very important because it can hint at the content of the film. If a film has a 15 certificate, the audience can guess that there may be moderate to higher levels of violence, sexual scenes and bad language, so if the audience member doesn't enjoy that type of film, they won't go to watch it, and vice versa they might enjoy that type of film.

SOCIAL MEDIA A new convention of film trailers is to add website URLs, twitter 'hashtags'

or accounts to follow, or instructions to 'like' their Facebook page. This encourages the audience to find out more about the film and also if many people are talking about the film on social networking sites word-of-mouth can become an effective advertising campaign. Twitter popularity means that millions of people across the world can tweet about a new film coming out, spreading the word and gaining the interest of millions of other people. Below is a screen shot from The Maze Runner trailer and the screen shot is from the very end of the trailer and shows a hashtag to be used on social media.

CHARACTER INTRODUCTIONS An important feature of film trailers is character introductions, whether

they have big Hollywood actors or not. This is essential because an audience can connect and relate to the characters, by their individual similarities, for example if there is a prominent young female character, targeted audiences who are young and or female connect to the character and are more likely to go watch the film. Also if the film has famous actors and or actress', and the audience have enjoyed some of their previous work within films, or are fans, they might go watch the new film because they know that they enjoy the actor's work.

MUSIC AND VOICE OVERS Music is a key feature, it can make film trailers. They show the pace of film,

genre and often the budget, for example a film may ask an artist to specially make a soundtrack for their film, the bigger the film budget, the bigger the artists on the soundtrack. Voice overs are important to guide the audience through the film plot and characters. A voice over can either be an external voice which is added on top of the footage, or the voice over can be sections of dialogue from the actual film.

NAME CAPTIONS In every trailer there will be name captions, these can be actor's names,

director's names or producer's names. This is important because an audience can see a director or producer which they are either fans of, or weren't. Directors like Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton have particular filming styles, and having their name on the trailer allows the audience to decide if they like the style of the new film, and whether they will watch it. Tim Burtons films are known for his dark, gothic, eccentric and quirky fantasy films such as Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), the animated musical The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

TIME LENGTH Usually a film will have more than one trailer made, with different sections

of the film edited together. There is always an official full trailer which lasts sometime between 1.30 -2 minutes, but often you will find, especially in horror, action or thriller films, they have shorter 10 second trailers which help build suspense and will just have a short clip which may or may not have the film title shown. When typed in to YouTube ‘Dr strange trailers’ this is what shows. There is mixture between teaser trailers and original trailers.

RELEASE DATE This is essential for attracting a large audience to the opening night of a

film release. The release date is shown on trailers a couple of weeks before the film is released, giving time for a wide audience to have seen it, but close enough to the date that people can plan to see it soon. The release date is usually shown at the end of the trailer, like the film title, so that the trailer grabs the audience's attention then gives them the information they need to go see it.