Kick Ass - Theatrical Trailer Analysis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFpWpkxsVI8

The trailer for Kickass begins with a back and forth shot between the protagonist in the film, Kickass, and his two friends. The shot and mise en scene are designed to make the three look like your average comic book nerds with glasses, curly hair and reading comic books. Accompanying the first shot of Kickass, or Dave (his real name) is the first bit of dialogue in the trailer. Dave says "How come nobody has ever tried to be a superhero?" Which is followed by his friend saying "I don't know, probably because it's impossible." Dave then combats this by pointing out that all you have to do is put on a mask and help people. This sets the theme for the film as it shows that anybody can be a superhero if they want to and it foreshadows Dave becoming Kickass.
The next sequence of shot show Dave, now becoming Kickass, putting on his outfit and mask and practising his fighting in front of a mirror.

It then cuts to a completely different view of Dave where he says that "My only superpower was being invisible to girls." Followed by a sequence of shots designed to show how he is socially awkward and treated like a social reject.

After this, the pace increases and upbeat music accompanies a montage of shots showing Kickass fighting bad guys and a series of other superheros dressing up and fighting crime. This builds up until you see Kickass meet up with Hitgirl and Redmist to fight the common enemy, a gangster who decides to send a message that you shouldn't be a superhero by attempting to kill Kickass and his accomplices. 

The pace starts out slow, appearing to just be following Dave's life but as he discovers himself as a superhero and becomes Kickass the pace increases and fast music comes in, enforcing the hype and building tension, making it feel like an adrenaline rush and making you want to see the film to watch Kickass in action. This trailer will be helpful to analyse as he main character shares some characteristics with the main character from our film, he is a normal guy with a mundane life who finds his escape and uses it to live the life he has always wanted, for Dave it is being a superhero, for our character it is lucid dreaming. Also I really like the style of action and comedy used in Kickass and feel like it would work very well in our film.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World - Theatrical Trailer Analysis

https://youtu.be/8NUBVcit5VM

In the theatrical trailer the focus is on the main character, Scott Pilgrim. In the beginning of the trailer he is seen at a party, introduced through a close up shot to show the tight space and the awkwardness of the scene and how he doesn't feel confident in social situations. It then cuts quickly to a split screen of Scott and Ramona Flowers with him looking starstruck at her as there is a magic wand sound and it shows Ramona to show he is amazed and awestruck, falling in love with her at first sight which is a stereotypical way of showing someone is falling in love with another character.

Digetic sound is then used in the form of dialogue to enforce the awkwardness between them as Scott attempts to make a move and talk to Ramona but is rejected by his own awkwardness and ends up saying "I'll leave you alone forever now". This line, paired with Ramona's casual behaviour, makes it clear to the audience that Ramona is out of his league and makes us root for Scott, empathising with him. 

The trailer overall is pretty fast paced cutting between different scenarios each showing him falling for her or doing something unusually to try and gain her attention like ordering an amazon package after finding out she works for amazon just to get her to turn up at his door, he uses this as a chance to ask her out and finally manages to score a date with Ramona. The next part of the trailer consists of clips of Scott and Ramona bonding slightly over time until Scott is faced with her first evil ex. The trailer then takes on a comic style with words appearing as actions are performed, their is also a lot of use of effects to create comic-boook-like fight scenes with exaggerated action and superpowers.

Generic Conventions Research

For the trailer I will be producing, me and my group have chosen to go for a branch of the comedy genre. We will be creating a Fantasy RomCom film and so I have looked into the generic conventions of each of these genres in order to establish what we should incorporate into our film trailer.

Comedy

- Comedy films are mainly set in bright towns and cities, very welcoming environments, we might subvert this by making the main character's world dull and mundane in order for the audience to sympathise with him and see why he wants to escape.

- A common form of comedy is slapstick, this is used in almost every comedy film at some point and will make an appearance in ours in order to fit with the comedy genre and make our trailer funny.

- Comedy films also use wordplay based humour such as puns to generate laughs and we plan to incorporate this also subtly to make it clear that our film fits the genre and feels like a comedy film.

- Within each friendship group in a comedy their is normally the 'idiot', the joker in the group who is there to make fun of the protagonists hardships and provide jokes at otherwise humourless parts of the film.

- Digetic sound plays an important role in comedy films, lots of the humour is based around funny and witty dialogue so we will make sure the sound quality is good enough for the audience to be able to make out the jokes being made.

Romantic Comedy

- Usual boy meets girl storyline, ends with them together after defeating the obstacle that kept them apart, wether it is social ranking (she is out of his league) or a person preventing them from being together they will overcome it and work it out, ending up happy.

- Romantic comedies sometimes rely on sexual innuendos for humour due to the romantic nature of the film and it is a way to get cheap laughs.

- A common feature from romantic comedies is a voiceover, it is common for the film to start with the characters being introduced to us through the use of establishing shots showing their everyday lives and how they are different with a voice over explaining a little about the main character. This could easily to parody to create humour.

- Another important aspect of romantic comedies is that the creators of the film must use cinematography and mise en scene to make the audience root for the hero and fall in love with the princess, this is often done by making the protagonist a quirky, adorable guy who is innocent and light-hearted while the princess is attractive and kind to the main character. We will need to try and achieve this if we want to focus on a romantic comedy.

Legend - Theatrical Trailer Analysis

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey7S4hko_Mc

At the beginning of the trailer we have the credits for the production companies, Working Title and Studiocanal. These production compaies are both given their own screentime and take up roughly the first 10 seconds of the trailer.

After that we see an establishing shot of London before jumping into some shots of the two main characters, the Kray twins, in order to introduce them to us. More titles are used to introduce the narrative through the form of fragments of sentences over the same background used for the titles at the beginning, this helps the viewer piece together the narrative and doing it a few words at a time, each frame broken by a few seconds of action from the film, helps set a rhythmic, fast pace that builds tension and hype for the film.

The shots taken from the film are carefully chosen to give the viewer an idea of what to expect from the film, by doing this it ensures that the trailer creates the same themes as the film and follows the same pace and style. The main generic conventions and themes show are action, gangsters, crime, guns, fighting and family. This is portrayed through the trailer by the action and also the use of more intertitles with the words "Power" "Fear" "Family" and "Legend", this is a clear way of displaying the films key themes and also feels as if it is building up to the name of the film.

The unique selling point of the film is the acting, Tom Hardy plays both of the Kray twins in the film through the clever use of special effects and incredibly convincing acting. This makes the film stand out from other gangster crime films as it makes it seem more intelligent and interesting. This helps the film reach a larger target audience as it is not only attracting fans of the gangster crime genre, which largely consists of males above the age of 18, but also attracts film critics who are keen to see the thought gone into having one actor playing two characters simultaneously as well as attracting fans of Tom Hardy as a star, using his star power to draw a larger audience and help ensure the success of the film.

The pace is important in the trailer and is set through the length of the shots, the editing used, how fast the transitions are, and the action taking place in the shots. The theatrical trailer has a rhythm but is slower than the teaser trailer, taking more time to show the details of the relationships between characters and explaining the narrative in more detail, giving more general information about the film. The purpose of the theatrical trailer is to provide information on the genre of the film, the style and pace of the film and to show it's unique selling point (USP), as well as providing details of the film and the narrative. All of these are achieved in this trailer by mimicking the style and pace of the film and by providing fragments of the narrative so the viewer knows what the film is about but the narrative is not spoiled for them.

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