STORY-TELLING UNIT: Soft Trailer

As preparation for filming our trailers / first 2 minutes of our screenplays, Simon set us the task of creating a trailer for a short film we watched as a group; Soft. Here's what I did:

I decided to do the trailer mainly to music with a few of the sounds from the actual short film left in. I decided to do this because this is a common convention that I have observed in many contemporary film trailers. This enables the mood of the piece to be set, then the sound from the actual film allows the audience to gain an insight to the storyline.

As well as creating this trailer for Soft, I wanted to do some research into other trailers in order to gain an understanding of what mine should be like.

The Great Gatsby:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OULhlaX6JY4

This trailer uses a mixture of songs from the soundtrack and pieces of dialogue from the movie. The songs help to set the time period of the piece as the 1920s. All the clips are quite short to prevent the storyline from being given away, yet enough of the narrative is shown to evoke interest within the audience. Dialogue from the film such as "Who is this Gatsby?" and "Gatsby? What Gatsby?" are used in order to create a sense of mystery and enigma which again captures the attention and interest of the audience.

The Grand Budapest Hotel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgGXL5lJ-6g

Like the trailer for The Great Gatsby, this trailer also uses a mixture of background music and dialogue. The trailer includes some voice over in order to reveal a little part of the narrative, the trailer then becomes more focused on the action within the film and a few sections of dialogue between characters. Towards the end of the trailer, fast paced editing is used in order to create excitement in the audience. This fast editing also prevents much information being given away which adds a sense of enigma and wonder. After watching the trailer you are still left to wonder what they complete storyline is.

What is important in a trailer?
- enigma (keep the audience interested and excited to see the actual film)
- a sense of mood (whether this is through music or dialogue, the audience should be able to tell what genre the film is)
- excitement / a twist (their should be something that makes the audience want to watch the actual film, if the trailer leaves the film being predictable the audience won't bother seeing the film - however, if the trailer involves a twist, the audience will want to see the film to see how it is resolved).