Trailer Conventions Essay

Explore the genre and conventions of your chosen media text. How do you plan to adhere to or develop these conventions?

For my coursework to create a trailer, I will be looking to follow the genre of romance and have looked at a number of trailers of typical romantic films to obtain an idea of the standard conventions that are included in romantic trailers that will be necessary to include in my own original trailer. I looked specifically at two types of romantic trailers, mainstream, big budget productions that are mainly targeted at teenage audiences like ‘One Day’, ‘The Notebook’,‘Dear John’ and ‘The Lucky One’, and then a set of more depressing and serious, arthouse productions, such as ‘Blue Valentine’, ‘Like Crazy’, ‘Remember Me’ and ‘Revolutionary Road.’

The differentiating factor between these two subgenres tended to be the types of characters introduced in the trailers. In the mainstream set of trailers, 3 out of 4 of them were written by the same author, Nicholas Sparks, who is showcased first in each of the trailers as this immediately makes it clear to the target audience that if you enjoyed one of these films, you probably will be likely to enjoy the rest.

'The Notebook'

'Dear John'

'The Lucky One'

With this labelling of the type of books these come from, it also becomes extremely clear what the characters and their situations are like. For example, a running theme that the audience picks up from in these four trailers is that all of the main couples have a strong and passionate connection even though each of them have long distance or broken up relationships where the male characters have to leave (both John (‘Dear John’) and Logan (‘The Lucky One’) are at war whilst Noah (‘The Notebook’) is forced away by Ally’s mother) or, for example in ‘One Day’, Dexter and Emma specifically only see each other once a year. The male characters in films like ‘The Lucky One’ and ‘Dear John’ are played by similar actors in every film, so much so that they become typecast – Zac Efron (Logan in ‘The Lucky One’) appears in a number of similar romance films playing pretty much the same character like ‘Charlie St. Cloud’, after appearing first as the heartthrob, Troy, in ‘High School Musical’ meaning that he is typically seen as the attractive male lead in romances. Channing Tatum is also of a similar position (John in ‘Dear John’) as he also appears in a number of romances such as ‘She’s The Man’, ‘Step Up’ and ‘The Vow’ and so is also typecast as the attractive male lead. This scopes out a target audience of teenage girls who will be instantly attracted to seeing the film because they know exactly what they are getting when a specific actor is playing the lead role.

'The Lucky One'

'Dear John'

Since it is impossible for us to use huge stars like Zac Efron and Channing Tatum, we will need to approach a different target audience as these actors are one of the main selling points of the film. This is why I will be looking to use some of the conventions of the mainstream romantic trailers but focussing to replicate as a whole, something similar to the darker, more realistic romances like ‘Revolutionary Road’ and ‘Blue Valentine.’ Although both of these films use huge actors as well like Ryan Gosling, who is also famously known for his romantic roles in ‘The Notebook’ and ‘Crazy Stupid Love’, he is not solely typecast as this role and so is able to embrace roles like the character of Dean in ‘Blue Valentine’, without specifically targeting the teenage girl audience. However, Gosling is still a major selling point for ‘Blue Valentine’ along with Michelle Williams, so I will need to target what else makes this trailer successful, to create something that works without the need of A-list stars.

Although music is always hugely important in trailers, it is especially key in trailers like ‘Blue Valentine’ and ‘Like Crazy’ where there is not much dialogue used and music is the main propeller for the trailer. By choosing an original song or cover as the main selling point for the trailer, it becomes its own advertisement of the film itself, and many people will remember the song by itself after seeing the trailer on the tv, internet etc. and so will be reminded of the film and are encouraged to see it. Both ‘Blue Valentine’ and ‘Like Crazy’ used covers of famous old songs throughout the whole trailer, which are instantly recognisable but with a twist of a new voice which people relate to the film – for example, the ‘theme’ song for the trailer in ‘Like Crazy’ was a cover of Elvis Presley’s ‘I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You’ by Ingrid Michaelson. In ‘Blue Valentine’, what made it even more memorable was that Ryan Gosling did a cover of ‘You Always Hurt The Ones You Love’ by the Mills Brothers, himself actually in the film and this is what starts off the trailer. The style of the music is also an obvious signpost to the mood of the film, as both use very slow paced and emotional music, suggesting the narrative may be quite dark and depressing. However, it works well to create quite a relaxed atmosphere as the pace works well with the montage of shots of the couple’s relationship and so builds a relationship with the audience. This also appears in the trailers for ‘Revolutionary Road’ and ‘Remember Me’ though on a smaller scale as they are more used as a background and mood setter than as a separate point of advertisement for the film.

            However, in modern mainstream romance trailers, there is a very specific routine of music that is followed. Whilst the characters are introduced, soft romantic music, usually piano is used to create a calm and cheerful atmosphere and then once the narrative becomes clear in the trailer, typically saddening and emotional music from bands like ‘The Fray’ and ‘Snow Patrol’ is used to create drama and make the audience feel more involved. Since this may be difficult to actually create original music like these songs, it may be more accessable to create a non-mainstream romantic trailer which only uses one song, or solely use the soft romantic music throughout the whole trailer like in ‘The Notebook.’ However, to fully use this convention, we would need to set back the time to fit the mood, so I think recreating the music similar to trailers like ‘Revolutionary Road’, ‘Like Crazy’ and ‘Blue Valentine’ would be more successful and also look more professional.

Voiceovers and credits dictating the narrative are hugely important in both subgenres I have studied. Although some of the mainstream trailers include voiceovers from the characters speaking from the film, a lot of them also use graphics to help further the narrative for the audience without using a outside narrator. In the trailer for ‘One Day’, an American voiceover is used which heavily contrasts against the English accents within the film. As I feel this doesn’t particularly make it look successful, I will not be following the convention of using an outside voiceover, but possibly considering using one of the character’s voices to dictate as this brings the audience closer to the character’s moods and relationships. This technique is used in many of the other trailers, such as ‘The Lucky One’, ‘Dear John’ and ‘The Notebook’ so seems to be a mainstream convention rather than a film like ‘Blue Valentine’ where there is basically no dialogue in the trailer. This means that I will only be adopting this technique of character voiceovers if I plan to replicate a mainstream trailer rather than a low budget one. However, a theme that appears in both ‘One Day’ and ‘Revolutionary Road’ is that the trailer is heavily dictated by snippets of dialogue and sound bridges solely between the two main characters. I think this works very well as the audience becomes drawn to the character’s relationship and so is encouraged to go and see what happens next. Since this appears in both a targeted teenage romance trailer and also a more mature romance trailer, this means I will be able to adopt it in either circumstance.

            Another trait that appears in both subgenres is the use of graphics to further the narrative even more for the audience. In ‘One Day’, the voice over is used at the beginning to simply introduce the characters but towards the end, text is used instead to express the story so that dialogue can still be used throughout the montage. This also appears in a different form in the trailer for ‘Remember Me.’ This has a voiceover of the character of Tyler at the beginning and then throughout the whole trailer, it is pushed along by short taglines expressing each step of the story for the audience, for example ‘he had lost his way’ and ‘he let someone in’ and this makes the film’s narrative easier for the audience to comprehend so they will be encouraged to go and see the film.

                                                                               

  'Remember Me'

'One Day'

This is similarly applied in the trailer for ‘Revolutionary Road.’ Since this seems to be a popular and successful technique used in romance trailers, I will apply this to my trailer in an end montage. Not only does this clarify the narrative for the audience but it is also an interesting and easy way to lead into the credits of the main stars. These always appear at the end inbetween shots of a montage of the main couple whilst there is more dramatic music playing and I will replicate this in my own trailer as I believe it is a good end to the trailer and fully clarifies to the audience that this is a dramatic romance.

The credits also allow opportunities for the film to show off any nominations or awards it has won and this of course is a key selling point for the audience as good reviews will mean that more people will definitely be encouraged to see it. The majority of the trailers I have studied, only mention nominations or awards at the end with the names, for example in ‘Like Crazy’, it says ‘Academy Award Nominee Jennifer Lawrence’ so it showcases the stars even further. However, ‘Like Crazy’, also credits awards from the Sundance Film Festival at the beginning of the trailer in-between shots and this similarly happens in ‘Blue Valentine’ whilst the song begins before the shots actually appear. I especially like the way they did this in ‘Blue Valentine’ and would like to adopt this into my trailer as I think it means you have the audience’s full attention from the beginning, especially if there are no shots surrounding it.

'Like Crazy'

'Blue Valentine'

W.H.