Analysing Taken Trailer

The main influence that we had on making a decision on what genre of movie trailer was the film trailer for Taken. It is a great film trailer with a great story line to match, it works wonderfully in terms of a trailer in the fact that it gives enough of the story away to give the audience a good idea of the movie but doesn't give too much away so that it keeps the audience on edge and wanting to know more, this is something that we are going to want to replicate when it comes to producing our film trailer.

I am now going to analyse the trailer and come to terms with all the codes and conventions that are used within a thriller movie trailer in order for me to gain a good understanding when it comes to producing our thriller film trailer.

At the start of the trailer there is a shot of the film distributors that are distributing the film, this is standard of any movie and therefore is something that we are going to need in our trailer, this is something that we are going to have to think about when producing our trailer because we need to choose the right production company.

The opening scene that it shows within the trailer is a couple of shots of the family, these shots are put there to help set the story line of the film and then make the characters known to the audience, this is down with small conversation.

About half way through the trailer there is a shot of the main character, Liam Neeson, in this shot the character is talking into a phone and quoting the tagline of the film, this is a very important shot in the film as this is something that captures the audience, something that we are going to want to replicate.

Near the end of the trailer there are a series of action shots within the trailer, these have been put in to show a different side of the film – the main side. It works really well within the trailer as it is an upbeat part of the trailer capturing the audience’s attention.

These last two shots are the film title and then the information on the film, these have been used along with music for obvious reasons, to let the audience know the title and information, this is another thing that is typical of a film trailer and therefore we are going to use this in our trailer.

Target Audience

After making a group decision on what genre we were going to make our film trailer, thriller/action, we needed to look at what audience we were going to target at. To do this I had to start looking at different films from the same genre and analysis different things about them, for example, their certification and gender aimed at.

- The Bourne Ultimatum - 15

- Olympus Has Fallen - 15

- Welcome to the Punch - 15

- The Dark Knight Rises - 12A

- Taken - 15

As you can see there are 5 thriller films that I have looked at, and above I have shown what each was certified, 4 of which were certified at 15 and one was 12A. This shows what the typical target audience is for a thriller film and shows what our film should be aimed to target at. Looking at the films of this genre they all seem to be based around males which makes me think that the majority of thriller/action films are going to be targeted at males primarily. This makes me think that I am going to want to target our film at males primarily and males that are over the age of 15 up to the age of 40.

Influence - Taken

For our film trailer we have decided that we are going to be making a thriller/action genre trailer, we didn't just make this decision quickly but instead we looked at different trailers that gave us an idea of what we wanted to achieve from our trailer. We wanted to be able to produce a trailer that would be eye-catching and something that would be able to hold an audiences attention while making them want to watch our film.

The first trailer we looked at and analysed was Taken. 

Taken is a film about a standard family, mother, father and a daughter and when the daughter goes on a holiday with a friend she gets kidnapped by human traffickers, the main story line is that her father, played by Liam Neeson, has to track her down and rescue her. We were intrigued by the story line and with all members of our group actually seeing the film they knew what it was about. The trailer doesn't give too much away and is clearly addressing the audience that it is targeting, this is something that we would be looking to replicate. 

The trailer uses a lot of dialogue and uses the tagline amongst many different shots so that it can get the story line across while also building a lot of suspense.

Our Decision on Genre

After looking into different genres of films and film trailers we decided that we would be best suited to a thriller/action genre film as this is what the majority of our group take the most interest in when choosing a film to watch at the cinema and is the one that we think that with all our knowledge around the area we will be able to produce the best. We toyed around with the idea of producing a comedy film trailer but came to the conclusion to go against this idea as we didn't think that we would be able to produce something that is original while being funny and therefore a comedy genre of film trailer would not be ideal to us.

Information on Thriller Movies

Name	The Dark Knight Rises	The Bourne Legacy	Taken
Directed by	Christopher Nolan	Tony Gilroy	Pierre Morel
Produced by	Emma Thomas Christopher Nolan Charles Roven	Frank Marshall Patrick Crowley	Luc Besson Robert Mark Kamen
Cast Members	Christian Bale Michael Caine Gary Oldman Anne Hathaway Tom Hardy	Jeremy Renner Rachel Weisz Edward Norton John Allen Albert Finney	Liam Neeson Maggie Grace Leland Orser John Gries Holly Valance
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures	Universal Pictures	20th Century Fox
Budget	$250 – 300 million	$125 million	$26.5 million
Box Office	$1,066,824,014	$212,995,326	$226,830,568

Analysing Different Genre Film Trailers

“The Dark Knight Rises” – Action

-          Lots of clips put together in a sequence with fast transitions to convey tense moments

-          Short dialogue clips – not giving too much information away to the audience

-          Non-digetic sound, in terms of music, over clip is slow to let audience think about what is happening

-          “I’m not afraid, I’m angry” – short line to attract audience as they will think something big is going to happen

-          Music gets faster when trailer becomes more action

-          Lots of special FX to engage audience

-          Punchy one liners to give information hints to the audience.

“TED” – Comedy

-          Not as many clips, more relaxed feel to film that an action film

-          Clips are quite long to show audience the jokes and comedy factor, also to get a feel for the storyline

-          Music over clip is much less ‘punchy’ and has words to it – an actual song.

“The Possession” – Horror

-          Draws audience in by having clip about family – attracting the audience to the film

-          Short clips, slower transitions to give it a ‘spooky’ feel

-          Slow ‘scary’ music

-          Doesn’t give too much information away to keep the audience guessing and attracted to the film

-          Involves family to add sad factor

-          Music becomes louder and powerful throughout to leave effect on audience

-          Loud noises like screaming and shouting to create an atmosphere.

“The Bourne Legacy” – Thriller

-          A lot of talking to start the trailer – this is to let the audience know the base of the story

-          Fight scenes are quick shots with loud sound to add to the atmosphere

-          Doesn’t give too much information away to ensure people are ‘on the edge of their seats’ and want to go and see the film

-          Music is quiet but quicker than comedies and horror, but it gets louder throughout.

 

What is a film trailer?

A film trailer is an advertisement or commercial for a film that has either been produced and is just about to be distributed or of a film that is yet to be produced or distributed. The purpose of a trailer is to make the audience want to come and see the movie when it is distributed and therefore needs to have different codes and conventions to ensure it does this. Films trailers are generally about 90 seconds to 150 seconds long which means that there isn't much time to show the audience what the film is about so what is produced for the film trailer needs to be perfect and eye-catching. 

I am now going to look at some film trailers to see what the typical codes and conventions of each genre of film trailer are:

- Uses fast music to build suspense, ends of quick music with special effects

- As this film is a sequel it is easy to get the film idea across without too much given away

- Lots of special effects used to enhance the film trailer, something that is not possible for our trailer due to the low budget

- Quick, snappy titles of names and taglines

- Dialogue to set the scene

- Uses uplifting music to create a feel good factor within the trailer

- Lots of use of words and taglines to create more suspense

- A sequence of short sharp shots to get the film's story line across as much as possible without giving it away

- Lots of dialogue to set the scene of the movie

- Ends on a very powerful shot with a quote that can change the thoughts of the trailer, keeps the audience guessing.

- Non-digetic music is used to make the trailer more fun and interesting

- A couple of comedic scenes to suggest that it is a comedy film

- A scene explaining what the film is about and setting out what is going to happen throughout the film

- Audience knows the story line of the film but doesn't know exactly what it is about, keeps them intrigued

- Uses a "From the director of...." line to let the audience know what the film is going to be similar to.