A teaser trailer is a truncated version of a theatrical trailer intended to entice the audience about an upcoming movie and to begin hype on major films.
Teaser trailers, unlike the typical theatrical trailer, are usually very short in length, usually under 30 seconds. The purpose of the teaser trailer is not to show a bunch of out-of-context clips in order to give the audience an understanding about the movie's plot or theme, but rather to let them know that the movie is coming up in the near future, and to add to the hype of the upcoming movie event. Teaser trailers are often made while the film is still in production or being edited and as a result they may feature scenes or alternate versions of scenes that are not in the finished film. Teaser trailers today are increasingly focused on internet downloading and the convention circuit.
Teaser trailers are usually shown among other movie previews, and appear months before the longer and more detailed theatrical trailer does. Some teasers have been known to appear as long as nine months to a year prior to the movie's final release date. While teaser trailers are regarded as a bonus to cinema goers.
Summary:
A teaser trailer is a short trailer advertising a film.
They are usually very short in lenght anything on average between 30 to 60 seconds althogh this can vary.
The aim of a teaser trailer is not so much for tell the viewers what happens in the film but is more aimed at letting the audience know when the film is going to be realesed.
They are usually released monthd before the film itself.
A teaser Trailer can entice the audience to their film by using narrative enigmas.
This year our examining board OCR requires us to develop a full marketing media package of a film. This needs to be done by developing a teaser Trailer, Poster of the movie and a front page of a magazine cover. Within the teaser trailer we got to explain the genre, show the audience who the stars are, explaining the conventions whether or not we intend to use them or subvert them. On the other hand the magazine cover should be used together with the poster in order to promote the film. When developing these we had to find out the size of them, the target audience in order us to know what kind of design to carry out when developing those.
In order to develop the media package I had to use both hardware and software. In terms of hardware I have used a camera and a video camera. The camera was used in order to take the pictures for the creation of the magazine front cover and poster. The camera use was a Nikon D50. This camera has LED screen with high resolution where i could check the details accuratley when taking the pictures and bove all it has a very high resolution of image. On the left you can see the camera i have used.
On the other hand i had to use a video camera in order to record shots for the making of my teaser trailer. The video camera i have been using is a Panasonic S50 which has been very helpful to me due to the fact that is easily compatible with the software that i have used. Also with this camera the recording was actually well pixelled.
One more hardware that i will need to use in order to perform my tasks and that will also be essential to the developing of the media package is the use of a computer. I will be using both a computer and a laptop, the computer is a HP pavilion and will be used for the designing and editing of the poster and front cover by using the software Photoshop Adobe. on the other hand i will need to use my personal mac book pro laptop that will support my editing of the trailer e.g. sounds, cuts, voiceovers, texts with the use of Imovie software.
Software
As well as using hardware i had to use two software in order to edit the poster, front cover and the trailer. The software that i have used are photoshop and Imovie. Photoshop was used for the editing of the images as this software allows users to manipulate images e.g. can change the pixel of the image, create text box, change background, cover imperfections, inserting shadows and changing the lighting of pictures.
On the other hand Imovie was used in order to develop the teaser trailer. I have chosen this software over Coral offered by Microsoft due to the fact that it is much easier to use. It allows special effects, editing clips, adding soundtracks, changing the lighting of the clips and inserting text boxes with a vast choice of fonts and colors. This software has also allowed me to convert the file into a form that can be read by any players.
Before i stared within the developing of the media package i researched on the teaser trailers. I began to study samples of teaser trailers made by pupils from other schools in the UK. My teracher showed me them from the internet where we compered to the professional teaser trailers made by big studios, so that i could get an idea of how ordinary students of my age measured up. Inevitably, the students trailers were simpler because schools do not have the resources that Hollywood can afford, but they were impressive nevertheless. Several of them were from the horror genre, perhaps because it's popular and perhaps because it may be better to represent the convention than representing a science fiction or action adventure. Below here there is an example of teaser trailer i have been looking at.
I looked at what appeared to be the convention of teaser trailers. Most of them were about a minute long and they used the time well. very little footage was wasted panning around scene and clips were kept to a second or two, sometime less.
There was a clear idication of the genre of the film in most of the trailers and i felt that it was important. A trailer that did not indicate the genre would not attract the fans of that genre as effectively as one that did. It seems obvious, but some trailers missed out in this department.
I also discussed with the class each trailer when saw and looked at its merits. that way i looked at the good things that i could use myself when developing our own trailer. Intresting camera angles, appropiate soundtracks and captions were discussed. There seemed a lot to think about. Spotting the faults in other people work is quite easy, but is not so easy to make a good trailer which satisfies all the audince.
Genre of the teaser trailer
We have been looking at many different genre of teaser trailers in class. I have analyzed them in class with my teacher by explaining how the teaser trailers are reflected with their genre, in order to understand how they work and how they ephasizes it. Furthermore this has been helpful for the creation of my teaser trailer due to the fact that by analyzing it i looked at the mise en scene, shots and music used. This has really gave me an advantage in the representation of the genre the teaser trailer i did. Below here there is one of the examples of teaser trailer we used in class in order to understnd the genre.
This is an horror teaser trailer. I have been studying at the mise en scene used in order to represent the genre of horror. As we can see in this teaser trailer the camera is tilting making us confuse of what is happing which does perfectly emphasizes the horror genre. Also the music and editing used on the teaser are perfectly matched therefore this gives more convention to the trailer.
Then, after we had analyzed the genres of trailer i decided to create an horror trailer for my coursework. The main reason why i wanted to create an horror trailer is because i thought interesting to represent a genre that i am scared of, therefore this as inspired me to develop an horror trailer.
Flow chart
Before starting recording any filming i had to reproduce a flow chart of the movie i wanted to create. The flow chart is a means of visually presenting the flow of the trailer. The reason i used it is because helps to clarify how things are currently working and how they could be improved. It also assists in finding the key elements of a process, while drawing clear lines between where one process ends and the next one starts. Developing a flowchart stimulates communication among participants and establishes a common understanding about the process. Flowcharts also uncover steps that are redundant or misplaced. Below here there is the Flow chart i created.
As we can see the Flow chart is telling us every takes that will be taken explained fully with a sense of order showed by the arrows. However before i started to draw up a Flow chart of the teaer trailer i wanted to do, our teacher showed us an example of a flow chart and explaind how the trailer sequence should be written in the flow chart boxes. Then i started writing the flow chart up. That took my a whole hour, however it has been very useful to me as it gave me a lot of new ideas on how to improve, making better the initial idea i had of the trailer.
Story Board
Here there is the story board of my trailer. The story board that i made is supposed to be a pre designed idea on how the real trailer will be.
This three pages are a representation on how the trailer will look like. I have created this in order to storm down all the possible shots and scenes that were in my head. The Story board has been fundamental to the developing of my teaser trailer as it has been an editing schedule to follow and gave me a clear idea on what i was going to do. However on the final trailer few takes are different as in the middle of the making i found better to record the action in another way that will be showed after on the blog.
When producing a media text for mass consumption, identification of the target audience is essential so the media institutions can assess the likely response to the product and the investment risks involved. As I indented to produce a horror media package I have focused on people who are over 18.
Therefore in order to asses my target audience I made few questionnaires and handed out to 40 people, all of them were 18 plus. In the questionnaire there was a set of question indented to find out the stereotype. As a result this as allow me to identify common characteristics of the social classification of the group of people used for the research. This as then made me to come to a conclusion that I had to focus on people aged 18 to 30 as they seem to be the ones who have more interest on the horror genre.
Before i started to do any required tasks i researched on the poster conventions and how they do represent and fit with the genre. I looked at two examples of posters that were related to my genre and target audience. The first one is just below here.
This was a poster extracted from the internet. As we can see the poster comes from a real movie called " The human centipede" which is a horror genre that suited for my developing of poster. Looking at this we can see that in the midddle of the poster is very unfocused whereas on the edges the image becomes focused.
This technique is fitting well with the genre as it gives a connotation of a freighting image that we cannot actually understand what is it, we can just imagine it. This therefore will also attract their target audience due to the fact that the audience that will view the movie can be interested as they will have build their own thoughts on what the movie will look like. (non linear narrative form)
this is another example that i took into examination before starting to develop my media package. here i have been looking at the conventions of the poster, whereas on the previous example i have been looking at the connotations. On this horror poster we can see that the conventions used are the title, date and the logos of media organization which are all the basics coventions needed when creating a poster in order to promote the movie. However the main convention to look at in this poster is the mixture of dark and light pitched colours that creates a connotation which fits with the genre. Also the way the title looks, the colour font and the shadows are used is emphasizing that themovie is real freighting.
The last reasearch i had to do before i could actually start to create my media package it was to look and analyze at the conventions of front cover pages. I have been looking at two examples of front covers, and one of those has actually gave me the idea for the developing of my front cover that will be showned later on. Here is the firs front cover that i had look at.
I got this front cover page from the internet and i examined the conventions of it, so that it could enhance my ability of producing a professional front cover page. We can see that the conventions on this front cover are the title, which is often the part that stands out the most together with the picture used. The other conventions in here are the title of the magazine "Empire", all the subtitles advertising other movies that will be covered on the magazine, the promotion line at the top of the page, the barcode, price and date of reales. All of this conventions are used in the front cover of a magazine due to the fact that allows media organization to promote their film to their target audience. Also the choice of which magazine will be used in order to promote the film is very important. For example you would not want to advertise an horror film on a comedy film magazine. Nevertheless this front cover has gave me the idea on how to build my front cover.
After i analysed this professional front cover i thought that it would be a good idea to look at a previous front cover made by an A2 student in order to see how they performed.
This front cover page has been done by an A2 media studies student. We can see straight away that it is not as good as the professional one. In fact this front cover page does not follow conventions fully, however it shows originality. We can see that the spaces are not well covered by the texts and the image. We can also see that the advertising subtitles for other movies are missing too. Furthermore we can see that it does not employ a range of fonts which are conventions of the front cover page.
