Phantom (Mel)

VIDEO: This is a trailer for the film 'The Phantom' which is released in 1996. Because it's quite dated the special effects are quite unrealistic. It opens, as most trailers do, with a green screen stating that it is allowed to be publicly viewed and released, which is followed by the company logo. This establishes who it is made by, and lets the viewer see where they can find out more about the company behind the video, which they are hopefully interested in. The opening shot is quite dark which could be misleading about the genre of the film. It is set in a jungle type area, which immediately establishes where the main parts of the movie will be set. It looks like a group of explorers which are looking for something in particular which could be the main storyline. However, the next shot then moves on to two people on motorbikes jumping over a hedge. To me, the style of the hedge and what you can of the building suggests that it is in quite a posh, or royal, area. The next few shots then include a man, who I assume to be inside the building, pacing with some old fashioned equipment, an explosion which is outside, and some stained glass windows being broken from what looks like an explosion outside. Then there are a few fast snappy shots with large fades which link together the story. There are lots of skulls prominent in the next 20 seconds of the trailer, which, for me, misrepresents the genre of the trailer. Because I did a YouTube search to find superhero movies from the 90's, I at first doubted my search. Up until 00:35 there are no shots of the 'superhero' which makes the film look more like a Science Fiction or Action Adventure genre film rather than a Superhero Adventure film. Also, for the whole of the trailer the lighting is very dark, which suggests that it is a lot more sinister than most superhero films. Once the superhero is introduced, there is a temporal text which shows when the viewer can expect to see the movie in cinemas. Also from then onwards the lighting gets a brighter, and the shots become faster paced. There is also lots of fire and flashes involved, which brightens up the screen a lot more as well. The skull is also still prominent, and there are many adjectives which flash across the screen to help explain the trailer and make it more appealing to viewers. There also appears to many stunts going on, probably to make the film see more high class and Hollywood style, such as a truck falling off a bridge, several explosions, a car chase and abseiling down a lift. In addition to this there are several shots of the protagonist avoiding any immediate danger, which could endanger his life. At 1:14 the main antagonist is introduced, wearing a black eye mask which immediately makes him look like the 'baddy' of the movie. The trailer ends with some fonts being stretched across the screen showing the date of release and the title against a black screen. I'm not a big fan of this trailer, as I don't think that it shows a story particularly well. I think that it is very misleading, as the main character of the film is not introduced until about one third of the way through the trailer. I don't think that we will take much from this trailer into our own, apart from including a wide range of special effects in our trailer to help draw in our audience.

Avengers (Mel)

The trailer starts with an opening panning shot of where the movie will be taking place. This is an establishing shot and it helps for the audience to judge what the genre or pace of the movie will most likely be. Because the setting seems to be in a urban landscape you can tell that the genre of the movie will probably be some kind of action, which is very fast paced and exciting. It then cuts to a shot of a woman look out of a window, appearing quite scared looking at some kind of disturbance, which then cuts to a large explosion in a street. You would guess from the low angle of the shot of the woman that she may be one of the protagonists of the movie, although this is not certain, but the way the camera focuses on her does portray that. You then see two forces which are recognisable by the uniforms they are wearing: the army and police. They both appear to be shooting towards something which is a little higher than all of them, which shows that the opposing force is stronger than them, and they are possible scared by it. The next few frames of what appears to be the opposition have very dark and blue tinted lighting, which suggests a sinister feel to the group. There is then more explosions shown which coupled to the audio soundtrack suggest a turn for the worst. There is then again more evidence of the authorities with helicopters and official looking buildings. This then suddenly cuts to comic strips and the production company name. The music changes which sounds a little more 'sassy' which could denote some kind of romance, but in this genre probably just means the introduction of a main female character. This is then again confirmed with the entrance of a woman with bright red hair, who appears to be followed by two men. There is then a montage which shows all of the possible superheroes and them exploring their powers. This is another establishing shot but this time instead of it being for the landscape it is for the characters. This goes on for about 30 seconds, and is then followed by a group meeting of the characters who are figuring out 'what are we going to do?'. Proceeding this there are many more explosions and special effects used to portray disturbances to everyday life. There then appears to be many fight scenes between two different groups, with text appearing on screen sporadically reading such things as 'This May' and trying to hook the audience in to see the film even more. There is also then a small dialogue which says 'if you can't protect the area.... we'll avenge it'. This helps the viewers to see where a bouts the name of the film has come from, and once agin gives evidence that the movie will be filled with action. There is then the name of the film flashed across the screens in a relevant font, which leads to the last scene of the trailer, with some diegetic dialogue between two characters and some very fast shots of some more fighting scenes.

Kick Ass (Tayler)

Kick-Ass | Aaron Johnson | Matthew Vaughn | Christopher Mintz-Plasse | Movie Trailer | Review


This is the trailer for Kick Ass 2010. 

0.00-0.06- Like the other this trailer includes a green screen for vital film information and also the production company’s logo, differing from 'The Amazing Superman' these are included at the very beginning rather than after some trailer action has taken place and this does work quite well to put the company recognition in the audiences mind as soon an possible.

0.07-0.19- This is a complex establishing shot taken from great heights. It doesn't establish the setting straight away but as the camera moves closer to the character (not a zoom) it then angles down over the city crating the establishing shot and also

The Amazing Spiderman (Tayler)

This is a film trailer for "The Amazing Spiderman" a 2012 superhero film which is still yet to be released making it first had research of modern day superhero trailers. I have chosen certain shots within the trailer with I like personally and show professional filming techniques.

0.04- Green screen establishing if it's appropriate for the specific audiences.

0.06-0.09- The establishing shot the camera pans the city from a high angle, this angle shows the intensity of the film and also establishes the height setting as we soon find out that the super power the protagonist gains allows them to be at a great height. The height placed within the character implied their importance and there rank in a social hierarchy.

This shot is also shot in the evening which allowed the natural lighting to be used to making the shot more interesting.

0.14-0.19- We are shown a sequence of over shoulder shots which put together shows a shot reverse shot conversation section within the trailer. The camera angles over the shoulder of both characters so it appears that both are in the conversation, however flips from camera 1 to camera 2 dependant on which character is speaking then creating a conversation sequence. The angling with these shots are level with the characters not showing any difference in power between them.

0.25-0.30- Here we see a clever transition shot which represents the progression of time. This is shown as the reflection of the young boy in the window then fading through to the boy in his teenage years. The symbolism created with the rain creates a negative atmosphere and a sad, loneliness within the character which has also been emphasised in the narrative within the trailer already showing the abandonment of the protagonist by his parents.

0.31-0.34- Here the company logo has been inserted for personal company promotion. Including this so soon within the trailer gains recognition and also informs the viewer where to conduct extra research if they want to find out more about the film

The rest of the trailer is linked together with a fast combination of shots taken from the film at various points. These shots are a wide variety of settings, vital characters to the plot and snippets of icon moments within the film. The editors have to be careful when selecting which snippets of shot to include to make sure the audience are going to understand the genre, and plot of the film without revealing the main storyline which then entices the audience to want to watch the entire film.

To make these shots link together effectively they have to be fast 2 second snippets transitioned with quick fades. As the trailer becomes more intense and the action progresses into the main superhero action the transitions turn to cuts to make the action progress at an intense pace and also increase the intensity of the action within the trailer.

1.42-2.16- This here is my favourite shot within the entire trailer. This is an abstract point of view shot. The character of the "The Amazing Spiderman" inhabits spider characteristics enabling him to move at increasing speeds along all dimensions and angles, griping to walls of 90° and also 180°. The shot has been creating following the type of route a spider would be able to run along, moving over the tops and sides of buildings and and using a web to swing from one to another. The shot is shown to us as though the camera is looking through the eyes of the character moving smoothly at a fast pace along the trail. This is a really impressive shot, to create such a smooth route with a pace so fast. The strength in this shot is in the last second 2.16 when we finally see the character in their superhero costume as "The Amazing Spiderman". This is the last thing we see before it's cut dramatically.

2.20- Onwards from here we have text shots of the logo and vital information for the audience of the release date, rating information and the film title. This trailer shows all of these really clearly and does state that the rating is yet to be decided by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification)

25 word pitch

One of Pete Fraser's techniques for making sure that the production we are working on for our coursework will be successful is to ensure that you can explain the plot of the film in just twenty five words. Here is my attempt at explaining what we are hoping to produce in twenty five words:

We are producing a stereotypical superhero film aimed towards teens about an unpopular student who inherits superpowers and is forced to save the world.

Permissions

We created permission slips for anyone in our film to use, which would help to keep the professionalism intact for our whole filming process. We highlighted all of the conditions that the actors would be under, for example that they could be used in our Media coursework and that any clips of them may be published on the internet for our benefit. We also made sure that they are aware that our trailer, with them in it, will be distributed across the country to any exam boards which are required to examine our coursework. 

Production Company

We created a Production logo for our company which would be shown in any official documents that we print out for our trailer. Tayler made the image part of the logo, by drawing the pants out on paint, and colouring them in. I made the text on a text generating website, and then using GIMP cut out the background of the text, meaning they could fit on top of the pants. We decided on this image and the name 'Why Fronts' because we wanted something which would reflect our light hearted feel to our film, which made it seem quite fun, but without being funny. While we were deciding on the colour of the pants, we decided straight away we wanted to use a primary colour. We knew this because Primary Colours denote simplicity, which is a feature that we wanted to display in our teaser trailer. After doing some research, we discovered that, according to Wikipedia Red is used a lot in advertising because it is useful to "gain more viewers". It has also been discovered by scientists that "red carries the strongest reaction of all the colours" which is why in the end we decided on Red. We chose the font that we used in the end because it looked quite like the style of a comic book, which is the style that we are aiming for.