Routledge
Production Area

Production Area

Television & Radio

Creating a Film Trailer

In this section we look at:

RESEARCH

The first part of creating a film trailer is the research.

Shadow of the Moon poster
PREPRODUCTION
Outline

Young special constable Gary finds himself on a job to track down DVD pirates — gets attracted by young girl selling them &mda is attacked and chased by criminals. With help from the girl's friends gets criminals locked up, but does the girl end up with him, or is she really in love with the gang leader?

Storyboard
Example of storyboard
Details and Planning
Example of location
PRODUCTION
Shot Size Standard Shot Sizes Used by TV & Film
Big Close Up (BCU) BCU
Close Up (CU) CU
Mid Close Up (MCU) MCU
Mid Shot (MS) MS
Long Shot (LS) LS
Basic shooting rules
  1. Always use a tripod to support the camera, unless you have a specific reason for wanting the shaky look that hand-held will give you. This can be dynamic in certain situations (chase sequences for example) but often it simply makes a production seem lazy or amateurish.
  2. If something is wrong in shot, call ‘cut’ and re-take the shot. If you accept a shot that has problems, then that will be the shot that creates problems for you in Post-production.
  3. Always adhere to the 30° Rule. This states that to avoid ‘jump cuts’ (where the camera appears to lurch towards a subject or the subject appears to ‘jump’ position between shots) any shots that are intended to be joined with each other in editing should be shot from camera positions that have at least 30° between them.
  4. Avoid cutting whilst in mid-camera movement — let the shot come to a ‘rest’ position as this will benefit the editing.
  5. Let the camera run for five seconds prior to calling ‘Action’ and after calling ‘cut’. This not only serves the editing, but it also gives some ‘moments’ where the actors’ bodies and expressions are relaxed — these are often valuable.
  6. Always adhere to the 180° rule. This rule is often complex to understand and even more complex to implement. The ‘line of action’ is an imaginary line — usually between two people, but it can run through one person — that the camera must stay one side of. The camera can travel anywhere on a 180° axis as long as it does not ‘cross the line’; as soon as it does that then all spatial continuity is lost and editing becomes an exercise in confusion.
    7. Example of 180° rule
POSTPRODUCTION

This is where you do the editing.

Editing suite
Basic options in Editing
  • Dissolve — an image fades out as another fades in making a connection between the two (girlfriend fades out as mother fades in)
  • Fade — often to black but can be to any colour. The duration of screen time given over to the fade and the end colour can suggest particular meanings.
  • Graphic Match — two shots can be connected through shapes within the frame (a clock matched to a car wheel)
  • Match on Action — two shots can be connected by the replication of an action across each (character begins putting drink down in seedy Soho bar, and cuts to drink reaching bar counter of Caribbean beach bar)
  • Montage — placing one image next to another creates meaning (person's face with apple pie = hungry, person's face with coffin = sadness).

TIP — Leave twice as much time for everything in postproduction as you imagine you need.

TIMESCALE

This whole production has to be done in one term — this is approx 8 weeks of work time. Do a critical phase path:

EVALUATION

The spec says:

“A combined evaluation will be submitted for both the production pieces and it will be original to each candidate, with a word limit of 1500 words. Each piece should be word-processed and word counted. The evaluation should engage with the intentions for the pieces in terms of the candidates research, but the body of the text should consist of an analysis of how the productions themselves work in the light of their specific target audiences; and relate to the research, media concepts and contexts. ”

This means that you are asked to write about how your film trailer and e-page or print reviews affect an audience and how they relate to professional products you researched. Don't forget context; this usually means seeing how your products fits into the context of the time. For example, a film trailer advertising a film about a terrorist attack should have as its context the fact that it was made post 9/11, or with reference to the London underground bombings. This is the context of terrorism in the UK in 2008. You can also include social customs, language, clothes and the way people look and act.

Film Trailer Evaluation:
Halloween poster

Look at your trailer in comparison to some of the trailers you looked at in your research for preproduction in terms of the key concepts especially media language, genre, narrative, audience, institution, and representation. For higher marks make sure you place your trailer in the context of its time and culture, and compare this with a professional text. For example if you made a trailer for a horror film which is set on Halloween night and includes elements of the unseen horror in our midst as in the original film Halloween: