For the trailer, I chose to do a theatrical trailer as I feel this would be best for this kind of film. The complex double plotline requires a little more presentation to the audience. However, I've also tried to show this through how I've structured the storyboard, flicking between the band and dilemma of the mines. This presents to the audience the multiple issues, and continues adding to the problems with the band losing at contests, and Postlethwaite's character, Danny, collapsing. The presentation of all these problems is to make the audience want to know how the characters will overcome all this in time for the film's end. I have also chosen to use very little speech, using "Now are we playing or are we packing in?" towards the end to show the resilience or possibly the breakdown of the band, and the "Land of Hope and bloody Glory" to finalise the trailer, the same way as it finalises the film, in summing up the satirical view of the country being so 'wonderful' when they have all just lost their jobs. I've decided to use the two pieces of music 'Floral Dance' and 'Danny Boy' as these are contrasting. 'Floral Dance' is to show the light and jovial nature of the film, whilst 'Danny Boy' shows the more melancholic side, especially with the progression of the problems presented. I have tried to create a sense of ambiguity at the very beginning to draw the audience in, and to make them curious, with the revelation of the Brass Band in the eighth frame. This is also to show that the film is not just about Brass Bands, it's about the devastation the closure of mines brought to families.
Out of the films given to us on our task list, one film caught my eye: Brassed Off. I have watched this film before and found it interesting, especially since I am involved in the brass band world as well. It is one of the many films dear to my heart, and so I chose to create a trailer for it, to try and show how truly great the film is.
Brassed Off is a British-American comedy-drama film centred on the fictional Yorkshire town of Grimley in the 1970s. The Grimley Colliery Brass Band is as old as the mine that is located there, the source of many of the bandsmen's jobs. However, the colliery is to be closed, and threatens the livelihoods of all who live there. The Grimley Colliery Band's last chance at saving themselves is to enter the nationals, and they seem to have no hope until Gloria Mullens appears with a flugelhorn in hand. The two plotlines of the threat of the mine closing and the band's struggle to get to nationals creates an interesting and unusual fusion that was interesting in both the perspective of historical and social realism. With more and more conflicts and problems arising for the characters, the film keeps you wondering how it will all resolve.
Since I was born, I have been submersed in the warm and musical family of Brass Bands, with family members being actively involved even before I was around. Therefore, I wish to capture some of the warmth and the familial feel that the film creates, whilst presenting the problems they will face effectively.
AS Media has been a real insight into the role and theory behind Media today, and I want to continue learning about this area as the course has sharpened my interest that I had at the very beginning. My main aims of the next year are:
Aim for deadlines! - try and keep on top of what I need to do whilst presenting a professional and sophisticated blog that is easy to navigate
Get involved more - talk and work with my group, and get more involved with extra curricular activities
Get more creative - search and discover new technologies and ways of presentation, and go the extra mile when researching
A trailer (or preview) is an advertisement/commercial for a feature film that will be shown in the future at the cinema. The term "trailer" originates from originally being shown at the end of a film screening, however, now trailers are shown before the film starts.
The History of the Film Trailer
The first film theatre in 1910 only had one screen. Patrons would pay an admission fee and could sit for as long as they wanted to in the cinema, watching films and cartoons on loops, meaning there were no set times for films. There were no trailers for advertising.
However, 1913 became "Year 0" for the film trailer. Nils Gralund made a promotional video for "The Pleasure Seekers", a broadway musical, and used rehearsal footage. It proved to be a big success for cinema owners.
Meanwhile in Chicago, Colonel William Selig made another way to get audiences back to the cinemas. He took the idea of print serials, and went to the Chicago Tribune, proposing the idea to turn a print serial into a short film. This gave birth to "The Adventure of Kathlyn", and each short episode would end in a cliffhanger so audiences would return the following week to view the next installment. This is arguably where the idea of the film trailer was formed. Cinemas began to show promotional videos at the ends of the films, and these first forms of
film trailer were basic. They consisted of clips from the films with text over the top introducing things such as the cast of stars. It took a small group of business men to realise how they could make money from the trailer industry that had yet to take shape. Distributing films through promotional videos was a nightmare for studios until the National Screen Service (NSS) was set up in 1919 by Herman Robbins. The group took film stills, spliced in titles and then sold them to theatres. This didn't actually bother any studios, in fact many liked the idea so much they signed deals to submit their films to the NSS to produce trailers. By the 1940s, the NSS had branched out to poster and paper advertising, and had contracts with all the major film studios. These studios signed contracts with the NSS to make trailers week by week. Between the 1920s and 1960s, the NSS dominated the trailer making industry. These trailers were simplistic, with stylistic features like screen wipes and fly in text, as can be seen in the trailer for Casablanca (1942):
In the 1960s, a new generation off star directors redefined the trailer. Alfred Hitchcock used his gallows humour to tour the audience around the setting of Psycho rather than using the film clips.
The re-emergence of cubism in film and commercial art in the 1960s was not lost either by Stanley Kubrick. His trailer for Dr Strangelove is considerably bold and different.
Trailers began to feature antiheroes, such as in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and there was more emphasis on the music used, as visible in the Simon and Garfunkel score from The Graduate.
The cookie-cutter style trailer of the NSS was being moved away from, especially as multiplex cinemas began to rise, meaning there was less space for posters. Film studios and production companies took control over their promotion again, and by the 1970s the film system landscape had changed.
Jaws was the first successful film to see the wide release. It was shown in 464 theatres on the 25th of June 1975, but was shown in 675 cinemas by July the same year, proving itself to be the largest simultaneous film distribution. Out of the $1.8 million budget, the Universal Group gambled $700,000 in national television advertising. This in turn resulted in huge opening box office numbers, gaining $7 million in the opening weekend, and $470 million worldwide. Thus, the blockbuster strategy was born, with trailers being at the heart of this, with big, bold visuals for big films. Don LaFontaine became "the voice" for these blockbuster trailers, his iconic line being "In a world..."
The trailer has adapted with the MTV fast paced edits of today's society, and has become almost a genre in itself, with boutique editing houses focusing solely on movie advertising.
A trailer is a series of extracts that depict the plot outline of a film without revealing too much to the audience and intrigues them into watching the film. The extracts tend to be of the most exciting or funny moments within the space of around 2 minutes and 30 seconds, which is the maximum length set by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). There are two types of trailer in particular: teaser trailers and theatrical trailers.
Teaser Trailer
Teaser trailers are usually released long in advance of a product in order to "tease" the audience. These also usually help create "hype" over a film, especially in the case of films in a series, such as Star Wars.
Teaser trailers tend to be around 1 and a half minutes long due to the fact that these are released early in production and therefore the producers do not have all the footage they need yet. It also creates mystery as it does not reveal the plot yet, leaving the audience in suspense. These teaser trailers are more common with big budget films that want to build up their audience to be large. An early example of a teaser trailer is the 1978 trailer for the Superman film directed by Richard Donner.
Theatrical Trailer
Released closer to the end of production/in the products final stages, the theatrical trailer tends to be around 2 and a half minutes long and contains more footage that reveals a rough outline of the plot without spoiling the film. It is heavily edited and often contains voice overs and title credits that inform the audience.
I have taken ten films and analysed their teaser and theatrical trailers. Each film covers a different genre; historical, drama, fantasy, romance, thriller, horror, comedy, musical, family and action.
