Conventions of Trailers // Summary of 6 Trailer Anaylses

From analysing 6 trailers of various genres I now feel more confident in writing out a list of conventions that I will consider following when I produce my own trailer.

At the start of 5/6 of the trailers I analysed a message from the 'Motion Picture Association of America Inc.' was shown stating the appropriate audience for the following trailer. Therefore something like this may appear at the start of my trailer to create a sense of professionalism however I do not think it is completely necessary as it clearly comes before the trailer (and not as a part of the trailer).

The Ingredients (Conventions) To Making A Trailer..

• The ident of your production company (or companies)
• An establishing shot or at least a shot that establishes something (the location or the relationship between 2 characters)
• Protagonist introduced 
• A storyline (narrative) is set up
• Part of how the film develops is shown (usually through an antagonist being introduced or a change of location)
• Something (e.g. the antagonist) stopping something happening.
• A voice over heard throughout either providing context for the film or linking the shots the audience sees together (conventionally one of the characters talking in a scene is used as a voice over, not another person).
• The length of shots shorten and a montage of shots are shown at various points in the film 
• Non-digetic incidental music increases (either in tempo, dynamics or texture), therefore building anticipation for the end of the trailer and making the target audience more excited to see the film.
• The title of the film is shown. (Other inter-titles are shown throughout the trailer as a break from the shots themselves). 

However,

Not all trailers follow these conventions. This is important to understand and recognise simply because if I chose to create a trailer following every single convention listed above then my target audience would become bored and not watch the whole trailer. 

Examples where conventions are not followed:

Toy Story 3 (2010) - the trailer is one scene showing the characters preparing the words 'Toy Story 3'. 

This works well for this film as it allows the audience to see the recognisable characters in one scene with each other. With most other films this would be ineffective but Toy Story 3 make it work as it plays off the idea that the audience knows who all the characters are and uses this and recognisable non-diegetic music to bring a sense of nostalgia to audience members who have seen the previous films. A technique like this is only possible in a film franchise.

School Of Rock (2003) - shows a very small amount of inter-titles throughout the trailer. 

This trailer focuses on music so there is less of a need for inter-titles as fans of music will be easily persuaded to watch the film. Inter-titles give the audience pieces of information about the film (e.g. marquee names) and so are used to entice the audience to want to see the film. This trailer, as I said, relies heavily on the music aspect and so it is not necessary to have the standard use of inter-titles as that would only distract the audience's attention from the main focus, which is music.

The reason these trailers can get away with not following the conventions is simply because they don't need to in order to create an effective trailer. If a trailer can be effective without following al l of the conventions then there is simply no need to put them in for the sake of it.