Teaser Trailer Research Page- Codes and Conventions

The Codes and conventions comparison between a Teaser Trailer and full Movie Trailer.

there are many different codes and conventions of movie trailers, over the years different movies have tried to do something different and change the "typical" teaser trailer conventions, however as it has been tried and tested with viewers most movies now stick to a general list of rules as they seem to go down better with the viewers.

That being said they have improved marginally over the years, as well as the film its self and viewers/audience.
starting with the opening credits; Film production logos, From each teaser trailer I've come across, the general first couple of seconds we can see the film production logo.

The production company's reputation can benefit the film trailer, the reason for this is people watch a movie that, that particular company has made, therefore the audience may want to watch more films that they have made.

Also, the audience can tend to immediately see whether this film will have a big budget due to the logo, for example the "20th Century Fox" logo will give the audience an impression that this movie will be good.

Here is another example of how companies get their LOGO into the opening credits of the teaser trailer.

Here we can see an example of where the producers of the world wide known "The Fault In Our Stars" which got number 1 spot at the box-office during its opening weekend, and grossed over $266 million worldwide against its budget of $12 million, therefore the producers knew by putting this 2 second clip showing they produced that film, that the following behind that film they would hope to get in this film. 

Here we can also see more promotion of different movies that have done extremely well, who are by the author who is a best-seller, the company here are trying to get as many viewers.
As these movies have their own following between them, they can converge together and create a larger amount of audiences for this film.

THE FILM TITLE

The film title is in every trailer, so you know which film it is that you want to watch and it is generally at the end of the trailer, as we can see below (2.31). this is that you see if after you are already interested in the film and therefore you are more likely to remember it.

The FONT, COLOURING & BACKDROP are normally a good clue as to the genre of the film, this particular film we can see immediately that it is a Romance film, the colours in this image are soft gentle.

BBFC- Age Certificate 

Any film released within the UK is given an age certification by the British Board of Film Classification, and the afe is shown towards the end of the film trailer.

This gives a guideline for the target audience age, for example these are the age guidelines.
this means that people who are younger than the age certificate wont be lead onto think they can go watch the film in the cinema.

Film age certification is also very important as it can hint at the content of the film, if the film has a 15 certification the audience can guess that there may be a moderate to higher level of violence, sexual scenes and bad language. Therefore of the audience member doesn't enjoy that type  of film, they wont want to watch it.

Social Media

Film trailers have started getting into the world of converging their social media to create a larger audience. They add Website URLS, Twitter, "Hashtags" accounts to follow, or even like what i have below which is "Click here to LIKE us on Facebook"

This encourages the audience to find out more about the teaser trailer they have just watched, this can give them more information about the film, also if many people are talking about the film on social networking sites word- of- mouth can become an effective advertising campaign.

Character introductions

An important feature of teaser trailers is character introductions, whether they have big Hollywood actors or not. This is very important because viewers get pleasure from films by connecting with the main actors/actresses, by their individual similarities. if the film has famous actors and actresses, and the audience have enjoyed some of their previous films, or are fans, they are more inclined to watch the new one as they know they might like the actors work.

 Music and Voice overs

Music is a key feature, and can make or break the film trailers. They show the pace of film, genre and often the budget, for example a film may ask an artist to specially make a soundtrack for their film, the bigger the film budget, the bigger the artists on the soundtrack. and people may think that a bigger budget means a better film.

Voice overs are important to guide the audience through the audience through film plot and characters. a voice over can either be an external voice which is added on top of the footage, or the voice over can be sections of dialogue from the actual film.

Release Date

For a teaser trailer this is extremely essential for attracting a large audience to the open night of a film release. the release date is shown on trailers a couple of weeks before the film is released, giving time for a wide audience to have seen it, but close enough to the date that people can plan to see it soon, rather than forgetting about it by the time the date comes around. 

The release date is shown at the end of the trailer, like the film title, so that the trailer grabs the audience's attention then gives them the information they need to go see it. 

Research- Introduction

For the first part of my introduction research task, I'm going to be looking into the difference from a movie trailer Vs an actual full movie trailer, I want to find out the difference in codes and conventions that are used in both types of trailers.

Firstly "what is a teaser trailer"
A teaser trailer is a short trailer that is often used to advertise an upcoming film or other media form. it can be released months before the due date of the official film to help create an anticipation and interest from the target audience.

The teaser trailers main purpose is to tease the audience with short snippets from the movie and by not revealing too much of the plot, a teaser trailer is usually under two minutes.


For one example this film "The Divergent Series" teaser trailer is (2.10)

A Movie Trailer;
A theatrical trailer is a much more in depth well revised longer trailer which tells us more about the plot of the film and gives us exact dates when it will be out. A movie trailer can tend to be up to four or five minutes.

For this movie trailer it is an extended trailer (5.41) this shows the difference in lengths of a teaser trailer compared to the full length movie trailer.