Trailer Terminology

One Third of A2's practical is the production of a Film Trailer for 'Writers Block'. But before I even consider making a such a piece, I must first familiarise myself with the proper elements and terminology which in themselves make said trailer;

Here for example is the 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi Official Trailer' (For which you can find an in depth analysis implementing the very conventions you'll learn below on this blog).

But where does one begin to understand the conventions used?

Macro elements

Genre:

The style or category of art, music, or in this case, film.

Narrative:

The structure though which movies tell stories.

Representation:

The way aspects of society, such as gender, age or ethnicity, are presented to audiences.

Micro elements

Cinematography:

The art of photography and camerawork in film-making.

Sound:

Refers to everything we hear in a movie. Words, sound effects, and music. Sound is used in film to heighten a mood, provide us with information about the location of a scene, advance the plot, and tell us about the characters in the story. There are two categories of sound in film: Diegetic (present within the films diegisis/ world) and Non-Diegetic (not present within the films diegisis/ world).

Editing:

The art, technique and practice of assembling shots into a coherent sequence.

Mise en scene:

The expression used to describe the design aspect of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction.

For example:

• The setting used

• Props

• Costume and make up

• Facial expression and movement

• Lighting and colour

• Off screen space

• And the list goes on...

All of which have connotations pertaining to something the text is attempting to represent.

SFX (Special Effects):

Graphics techniques that are applied to images and movies in order to simulate a real or imaginary event.

To delve deeper...

Connotation/ Denotation:

Words, sounds and visual images have denotative or literal meanings. A dictionary

definition of ‘rose’ is likely to describe it as a flower, with a thorned stem, having a

variety of colours and emitting a pleasant scent.

In our culture, however, the rose has a large number of associated meanings, the

majority of which connect with ideas of romance: ‘My love is like a red, red rose’. Be

prepared to explore these associations or connotations as they are

likely to yield a good deal of insight into the preferred reading of your film poster

and magazine cover.

Tone and register:

What tone is being adopted? Remember that in human communication roughly 70% of the message is through non-verbal communication, 23% is tone and a mere 7% is through the words used. Is the tone humorous, solemn, laddish, coy, sentimental, or

what? Register refers to the vocabulary, style and grammar used by speakers and writers according to a certain situation. There are thus degrees of formality: bloke, man, guy, gentleman, geezer, dude, blud or ma, mam, mum, mummy, mother, mater.