Anaylsis of film trailers

Film trailers first appeared in cinema in November 1913, when Nils Grankund produced a short promotional film for the musical 'The Pleasure Seekers'. In the 1950s many trailers where created by the National Screen Service and mainly showed key scenes from the film with narrative large font appearing over them as well as a loud and powerful voice advertising the film. A key example of this type of trailer is the original Cinderella trailer from the 1950s shown below.

In the 1960s motion picture trailers changed, Textless, montage trailers emerged and quick cut editing became very popular. Today such companies as the Cimarron Group top the trailer industry producing trailers for films such as Twilight and The Fourth Kind. The trailer industry has become a independent franchise and has its own cult following.

Above is the teaser trailer for the soon to be released film Inception, the idea of a teaser trailer is to create enigmas about the film by using quick cuts and a very vague view into the characters and key events. There generally isn't any dialogue on a teaser, however there is always a prominent backing track to the trailer. The director, release date and main actors are shown in the teaser trailer. In therms of Genre theory the film Inception is shown to have a wide extension about it, where, from the trailer, the film could be labelled with different genres such as Thriller or Action and Adventure.

Analysis of Inception Marketing Campaign and Magazine Front Cover Analysis

Above are three movie posters advertising the to be released film Inception. Each of the poster share common themes: for example all three of the posters appear to have a blue screen over an original image, also all three of the posters contain some what bizarre scenarios and scenery. All three feature Leonardo Dicaprio as the main focus in the poster, this is because he plays the main character in the film. The other characters in the poster are also shown to fit with the genre of the film (they are all dressed relatively smartly, some have guns). The actual title INCEPTION on all three posters follows the same colour scheme of red. There is a beam of light on each poster, on all three very central. Finally Leonardo Dicaprio's name heads all of the posters with the tag line "your mind is the scene of the crime".

Above are some examples of intertextuality within Warner Bros movie posters, the first is a movie poster from the 1999 film The Matrix, it shares a strong resemblance to the third Inception poster on this post; both have a group of characters engulfed by buildings (a very important part of the Inception movie) and a emphasized vertical feature behind them (The Matrix poster a beam of light and Inception the road is shown as a curling wave). Below that is a comparison of an Inception posters and one from The dark Knight, both have a very strong resemblance. Potentially this is down to Auteur Theory where because both films have the same director (Christopher Nolan) both will be advertised and sold in a similar fashion. Both Heath Ledger as the Joker and Leonardo Dicaprio's back is facing the audience and are engulfed by the architecture of the city also like all the Inception posters they both have a sort of blue screen effect on the posters.

Finally these are the two film magazine front covers featuring Inception (Total Film and Empire) As most of the Inception posters both magazines have used architecture as a main feature within the film, Total Film has actually changed the font on the magazine to buildings. Although the backing to Total Film is visually better then Empire, the image of Leonardo Discaprio isn't to a high standard like Empire (the image is the same as the poster where the characters are at different angles, with a photoshoped gun). What both magazine do well is fit to the genre of the film and keep the theme of buildings and architecture strong.

Above is the Empire magazine front cover specialising in the film Public Enemies, as with all the magazine front cover there is a emphasis on the main image (it is allowed to go into the masthead). The other films that are featured within the magazine are sectioned a area to the side of the front cover almost to frame the main image. Also there is a common trend in Empire front covers of there being a large '+' at the bottom of the front covers displaying the other features and regulars in that particular issue.