Initial Research into How Trailers Work - Luke

Analysing media language in the trailer for Nightmare on Elm Street

http://youtu.be/Adgp0v_mfTk

The overall message of the Nightmare on Elm Street trailer is to come and see the film to find out what is happening to these kids, and as the voiceover says ‘no one will survive!’ so it’s almost daring the audience to watch it and disprove this point.

The formal signs which tell you it is a trailer is the voiceover; the title slide ‘from New Line Cinema’ and the reference to previous projects; ‘creator of The Hills Have Eyes’. These are all established ways of recognising the trailer form.

The signs that create Barthes’ enigma code are; the smashing through the mirror, coming through the wall, tongue through the telephone, floating girl, out stretched arms and knives for hands. These fit the enigma code because they cause questions asking what is that they have just seen, and seeking an answer through the film, which is one of the ways that Barthes feels audiences understand narrative - by interpreting what they see through the need to answer the main enigma / mystery / question.

This film is part of the horror genre and how you can tell this is; through the use of the word ‘Nightmare’, the violin music that plays, blood, screaming sounds, creepy looking children and the use of voiceover ‘If she fails, no one will survive’.  Therefore there are clear genre codes in operation as well.

Analysing media language in the trailer for "500 Days of Summer"

http://youtu.be/PsD0NpFSADM

The overall message of the trailer is that this is an original take on the love story and you should go to see it.

What tells you it is a trailer is the short cuts and montage editing and the use of a single piece of non-diegetic music that plays throughout, which wouldn’t happen in an actual film, even a short one. Also the use of title slides throughout saying cast names ‘Joseph Gordon-Levitt’.

It draws on  Barthes’  enigma code through the use of title slides; ‘girls love romance’ then you hear the girl say she doesn’t believe in love and it causes a question to be raised of how this opinion is going to be changed (which we are sure will happen because we have recognised the genre). The shot which features a bus all with the same girl, the Ringo Starr record, the running through a shop all cause enigma as it makes the audience ask questions to the relevance.

This is in the genre rom-com and this is evident in the trailer through the use of; dialogue ‘You know if she says hi she’s a lesbian right?’, the use of title slides ‘Boys are scared of commitment’, how  the two characters kiss, when the two characters smile at each other, the voice over saying ‘This is a tale of boy meets girl’ and the upbeat pop music.

We have begun by analysing trailers in this language-based way because it is easy to be distracted by the variety and pace of shots and forget what trailers are really doing. The point of this exercise was to learn that trailers have a lot of complex codes going on at the same time - formal, narrative and genre, and we will have to mix these in our trailer in an equally fast-paced way.