Teaser Trailer – Genre ConventionsA2 Media

Length/Pace

The length of a teaser trailer tends to be around 90 seconds, but deviating between the length of one to two minutes. There are sometimes even shorter teasers of around 20 seconds seen, however, these give barely nothing away, and may be used for TV advertising (like a 30-second advertisement) or to announce that the film is in production. The shorter length of some teaser trailers may reflect the fact that teaser trailers are seen when the film is still in production. Anything longer than two minutes has enough time to perhaps give a more detailed idea to the audience of what the film is about and is more than a teaser, and so is a theatrical trailer.

So one to two minutes, with a general conventional length of ninety seconds seems to be the optimum time for a teaser trailer.

The pace is generally quite fast for a teaser trailer, giving the audience small snippets of the film, which tease the audience more, fitting more to the purpose of a teaser trailer. A slower pace would allow for more of the story to be explained to the audience and so would perhaps be more conventional of a longer, theatrical trailer that has more time to explain the story than a teaser trailer. However, some teaser trailers, like the one seen for Avengers: Age of Ultron, which has a very slow pace, break these conventions, having only one main shot for the teaser trailer. This could perhaps be an exceptional case.

These breaks in convention could be related to Neale’s theory of ‘Repetition and Difference’. Although this theory mainly relates to genre conventions, it could be applied to the conventions of a teaser trailer. Keeping all teaser trailers at the same pace would only be effective to a certain point. The Avengers: Age of Ultron teaser trailer breaks these conventions by only having one shot in the trailer. This deviation from a fast pace arguably makes the trailer more dramatic. In a conventional teaser trailer, a longer shot that deviates from the fast pace could be seen as more significant to the film, since it gets the privilege of more on-screen time in the trailer.

Length/Pace (cont.)

So the aforementioned trailer could have been an experiment of sorts, seeing if the one long shot could be as exciting and dramatic as other trailers. The trailers aim may have been to dramatically shock the audience rather than excite them with a fast pace, like the fast pace in conventional teaser trailers of a similar genre. This break in convention could perhaps entice the viewer more to find out more about the film and would be more likely to watch the film because of this break in convention of pace.

This change of pace allows the viewer to notice the break in convention and they will remember it more. This one, longer and dramatic unconventional shot could perhaps show enigma also, in a different way. This relates to Neale’s theory again, since the principle of his theory is about deviating from the normal and telling a story by twisting certain aspects to make a product different and exciting.

This break of convention is interesting and perhaps made the film more successful, but it is important still to recognise that the majority of teaser trailers still use a fast pace and a general length of one to two minutes, otherwise it would not be recognised as a convention.

Production Design (mise-en-scene)

The mise en scene of a teaser trailer will relate to the film it is advertising, since most teaser trailers will include clips from the film. Even some clips that are made specially for the teaser trailer will carry the same mise en scene as the film. The same would be done with the style of titles used and the logo shown. It keeps the branding consistent, so the potential audience remember the style of the film, and it helps attract the right audience for the film.

The use of consistent colours in the teaser trailer can help establish a tone for the film, and using the same colour can make the audience familiar with that colour, and they may associate that colour with the film.

The use of lighting can be used to help the audience understand the film a bit more, by highlighting the important characters in the film (related to camerawork) and somewhat introducing them to the audience, perhaps creating enigma (Barthes’ Hermeneutic code) around the characters and making the audience want to find out more about them. This can introduce both the protagonists and antagonists to the audience. Perhaps in blockbuster films, this could also be used to highlight big movie stars the feature in the film (‘star appeal’), helping advertise the film. This could be used in conjunction with facial expressions to create enigma by showing some of the characters’ facial expressions, looking dramatic (relating to our genre), which would hopefully entice the audience more to find out more about the film, going to watch it and fulfilling the purpose of the teaser trailer.

The technique of ‘Breaking the Fourth Wall’, or the ‘Direct Address’ can be used in special clips in the teaser trailer by the characters to convince the audience to side with the characters, which may make the audience wonder more about them and their story, and so they may be more likely to go and see the film. This can be seen in the teaser trailer for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), when one of the main protagonists, Violet Baudelaire speaks to the camera at the end of the trailer. However, this may again be an exceptional occurrence since this distracts the viewer from the content of the film seen in the trailer itself.

There are a lot of techniques that could be used to help set the tone of the film and introduce certain characters to the audience so that they are intrigued by them, creating enigma and fulfilling the purpose of the teaser trailer to help advertise the film and entice people to go and see it.

Editing

The editing features a lot of cuts in a teaser trailer. From analysing teaser trailers, the pace is often very fast (at least in a similar relation to the genre of the hypothetical film for which we will be making the teaser trailer).

It is often seen that there is a cut nearly every single second on some occasions, with this length deviating at some points. This makes the sequence look more dramatic and exciting for the audience. Perhaps ellipses would be used to cut to different parts of the story (although still concealing the resolution).

The use of continuity editing is minimal, since the editing can be used to represent the scale of the film in the teaser trailer. In order to show off the scale of the film, the trailer needs to quickly cut to different locations constantly to make the film look more exciting.

Editing in teaser trailers seems to be structured more like a montage of clips from the film itself. A collection of clips that are edited together in a fast pace. Montage editing, as a theory, was explored by some filmmakers also. One of the pioneers of montage editing was a 1920s Russian director by the name of Sergei Eisenstein.

Eisenstein believed that the use of a montage could allow a group of clips to have a greater impact than the individual clips that make it up. He described this as the ‘tertium quid’, or the ‘third thing’. This refers to the third product that is produced by grouping the two or more elements together, which is greater than the sum of its individual parts. His experiments with this form of editing allowed him in one particular sequence to heighten emotion in a scene. This was when he produced the sequence of a baby’s carriage rolling down some steps and showing the reactions of people towards the event.

Editing (cont.)

Although this is from one of the pioneers of montage editing, and is nearly 100 years old, I believe that it is still relevant today, and could help with the production and editing of our teaser trailer. This could be shown in teaser trailers when combined with Barthes’s Narrative Theory, particularly the Hermeneutic (enigma) code. In both teaser and theatrical trailers, part of a story could be explained, and there is a sequence of characters reacting to an event that takes place in the film, but without showing the event, or giving little glimpses of the event.

In the trailer for Independence Day: Resurgence, some of the main characters can be seen talking about a certain event, and we get to see glimpses of what could be a large spaceship, but the audience cannot be sure. This undoubtedly will be explained the in the film, but it encourages the audience to find out more, when the characters are seen reacting in such a way. A fast paced montage of something like characters reacting allows the trailer to be more relatable to the viewer. The viewer becomes more involved and wants to understand what the characters are reacting to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4QHfgOMVM8 A montage can also help show the genre of the film and help to reach the target

audience more by showing particularly conventional elements from that genre. Although Neale’s theory suggested that genres do need to be developed, and not stay the same, but a trailer showing a montage of mainly conventional elements, and then perhaps something more to offer the extra something to the film that is required to develop the genre, it makes the marketing of the film more secure. Advertising a sci-fi film by including a montage of lasers, UFOs, aliens, time travel, technology, etc. can help target those who enjoy sci-fi because they will recognise those elements and may be intrigued to find out more.

Editing (cont.)

Montage editing can also be used in trailers to show little snippets of events that will happen throughout the film. This could help give the film a greater sense of scale, but it also allows more enigma to be added, since the shorter clips do not reveal as much. This helps it become more effective in marketing a film. And of course, this can then be broken in a trailer, with a longer clip cutting from the fast paced action (which also helps to categorise a film into a certain genre) to highlight the importance of certain clips.

All of this is worth considering when making our teaser trailer, since understanding the pioneering work of certain editing techniques can help us when editing our teaser trailer, informing the decisions we choose.

http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/montage/montage-1.html

Titles

Titles are an interesting marketing device in teaser trailers and sometimes seem to have little purpose too.

By this, I mean that there is often text seen at the end of a teaser trailer that will stay on screen for a very short amount of time. These are the credits. They credit the main people involved in the film and the production company that distribute the film. These seem to be more of a legal obligation. They don’t offer too much as an addition in successfully marketing the film. If the film wants to boast about the director that they have for the film, they will often include this as a separate title.

But the fact that these credits do only stay on screen for a very short time implies that they are not really important in presenting the film itself to the audience.

As aforementioned with the example of including a well known or “award winning” director as a title to promote the reputation of the people working on the film to attract the audience, there are other titles that could be used to help attract the target audience and promote the genre of the film to give the film fair representation and market the film appropriately and successfully.

The inclusion of a director/producer/writer could not only boost the reputation of a film, but it can also help present the genre of the film to the audience, based on the reputation and history of that person. For example, inserting JJ Abrams’s name into the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens will help market that film because JJ Abrams also directed the films for the theatrical reboot for the Star Trek series. A series of films that has proved very successful. Star Wars is using the history of its director as a director of other science fiction films to help promote the film to its target audience, which is probably quite similar since both Star Trek and Star Wars are science fiction.

Titles (cont.)

Titles can also be used to inform. Not necessarily to help promote the genre, but they can inform the audience of the name of the film and the time at which it will be released.

The use of a tag line as a title can also help to inform the audience of the narrative of the film somewhat and can also be used as a form of action for the audience, perhaps addressing the audience to find out more about the film by asking rhetorical questions. The tag line could also be used to promote the genre of the film. By choosing words carefully, the tag line could include certain vocabulary that could be associated with a certain genre.

All of these factors should be considered when making our teaser trailer because understanding the purpose of certain titles to improve the success of the teaser trailer can allow us to plan our titles accordingly in order to make our teaser trailer more successful in promoting the film.

Camerawork

It would be likely to expect the use of multiple establishing shots I think in a teaser trailer. This would help give a hint of the narrative away to the audience but would also help establish the setting of the film, which can give the audience more information as well as help inform the audience of which genre the teaser trailer might fit into. This could also give the film a sense of scale, with grandiose locations perhaps making the film look more professional and high budget, which could inform the viewer also of what they might expect from the film. Information like this could help attract the target audience further by showing them what the film has to offer in terms of the locations.

Close ups would be seen I think to introduce characters and their facial expressions in those close ups could help give an idea of the tone and themes that could be expected within the film, which could also help inform the audience of which genre the film could be about.

Sound

I would say that there is a lot more emphasis on the background music used in trailers than the diegetic sound of the film. Some of the sound is also asynchronous.

With a lot of action films and sometimes drama, there is a lot of high tempo intense orchestral soundtrack used to accompany the dramatic and action filled footage from the film to help build the trailer. And for a rom-com, perhaps a more light-hearted, bouncy track would be used, to give it a more comedic effect. This music helps set the tone of the film and it therefore more greatly informs the audience of what the film may be like. This can also help establish the genre of the film.

What I have also noticed is the fact that the track used can also influence the structure and editing of the trailer itself. Since it is often and expected to see a lot of cuts in teaser trailers, it does make it a seem more acoustically pleasing as well as aesthetically when they work together. For example, there may be three fast and sudden beats in a dramatic track, and there will be a cut in the trailer in a clip for each one of those; perhaps a jump cut in the same scene to heighten the action in that clip. When the sound and editing work together, it makes for a more pleasing experience. Also, the audience may then remember certain part of the trailer more through association (like a jingle in an TV advertisement), which could help make the teaser trailer more successful as a marketing product, by making people remember the film through this technique. Understanding this could allow us to make decisions on the structure of our teaser trailer. Therefore, I think it would be important to consider the music track before picking out certain scenes. Perhaps a feel for the general structure would be good, to make sure that the trailer conventionally works from an initial idea. But without knowing the true structure of the trailer, I think it would be more difficult to edit the trailer.

If we had an idea for a film and then ideas for some of the most effective and pivotal scenes that would occur in the film, gluing them together may not necessarily work when it comes to writing the screenplay, because you may not actually know which parts will be used. This could jeopardise the trailer’s structure and the content within it, therefore knowing the music beforehand will give a better idea of the structure of the trailer, allowing it to be more successful.

On the left is the TV trailer advertising the feature-length special for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. It is the length of a teaser trailer and the product itself is the length of a film, so it is still a relevant piece to comment on. This is a good example of where the editing has been suited to match the beats in the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkq8pnvsnQg

Sound (cont.)

In terms of asynchronous sound, there seems to be a lot of this seen in teaser trailers and trailers. This could be the voice over of another character talking in one scene, but we are seeing clips from another. This could also be seen as synchronous in a way because the clips that are being shown with the voice over may relate to the voice over. This is effective because it can help give some information to the audience about the story or the characters. Somewhat informing the audience about the characters within the film could attract them to find out more about the journey of the characters. Informing them of the plot more through this technique, and perhaps matching voice overs up with different clips in the trailer could also help present the genre of the film more firmly towards the audience.

A voice over explaining certain elements of the film, whilst being paired with clips from the film can make links between certain elements of the film.

Special Effects

As aforementioned in camerawork, use of special effects (particularly CGI) could help show the scale of the film that is being advertised. Showing off large scale CGI could help give the film a greater scale, showing off that they can manage to tell a larger story and can build a bigger, more convincing, intriguing and exciting world to draw the audience in. However, in this particular age, in Hollywood, large scale CGI is becoming very much the norm, so it doesn’t have as large an effect as it did when it was a newer technology, so this could fault it somewhat, especially if executed poorly.

Perhaps in this case, the film could be marketed better if it included less CGI and special effects (of course, this would only account for genres where it is really needed; because our teaser trailer does plan to have elements of action to it, then this may have to be considered). Including less special effects in the teaser trailer could make it stand out more from other Hollywood film trailers. However, this could also be seen as a large risk.

If there is in fact a lot of CGI in the trailer, but none of it is included, then it will attract the wrong audience to the film, and therefore will not be as successful. This works vice versa. For example, my first impressions of the trailer for Independence Day: Resurgence was not good, because I expected it to look similar to the previous film as seen in 1996, which I enjoy. However, there were a lot of Hollywood style special effects featured in the large majority of the trailer which doesn’t attract me towards the film, because I was hoping to hear a bit more about the characters and the story, rather than seeing special effects.

As I have seen and enjoyed the first film, I will give it another chance and I will judge the film itself, however, since this film was 20 years ago, many people may not have seen the first one, and therefore may only have this trailer to rely on, rather than the previous film. But this normality of Hollywood CGI could still attract a lot of people, and since it is being marketed by industry professionals, then they may know what choices to make when it comes to attracting the right audience.

This is all something to consider for our teaser trailer, considering that we may have some use of special effects in our trailer.

Metz – Genre Theory

The French film theorist Christian Metz theorised about different stages of genre development, and I think that this could be applied to teaser trailers.

The four stages were as such: 1. Experimental – This stage was about establishing the conventions of certain

genres by playing around, and experimenting with them. 2. Classical – This is when the experimenting is done, and there is an established list

of genre conventions that are iconic, giving them a classic style, e.g. saying that a James Bond film is a ‘classic spy thriller’.

3. Parody – The stage in which the conventions and codes of the genre are mocked. 4. Deconstruction – This involves picking out key features/generic conventions from

multiple genres to form hybrids. The deconstruction stage involves picking out key features from genres, and

then merging them with other key features from other genres to create hybrids. However, I think that picking out key features from certain genres may be key to helping market the film appropriately using a teaser trailer. For our teaser trailer, picking out key elements from the drama/action genres and then including them in our teaser trailer helps show the audience what genre(s) the film will be. This would be generalising it to teaser trailers in general. Being more specific to our film, since it is a hybrid of drama and action, with a little bit of fantasy, we can follow the fourth stage more that Metz theorised about, by including the key elements of these genres in our teaser trailer, which will help attract the right audience further, and will hopefully make our teaser trailer more successful. I would think also that this would be conventional of other teaser trailers, since it makes sense to follow this stage to help the teaser trailer attract the right audience, allowing the film to be more successful, both critically and financially.

Neale – Genre Theory

Neale’s main idea about genre was on the idea that genre is developed through ‘repetition and difference’. The audience received pleasure from this difference to the genre, with it being slowly twisted. A person called David Buckingham had similar views to Altman when it comes to genre, saying that genre is not simply given, but is a constant process of negotiation and change. ‘Negotiation and change’ could be seen as another way of saying ‘repetition and difference’.

Neale has ideas about genre that also relate to the narrative codes of Barthes. Because Neale theorises that genres (through repetition and difference) develop and change over time, a film of a certain genre made in the past will have a different feel/experience to a film of the same genre that was made in the present. This could relate to Barthes’s fifth code – the cultural one.

Because culture does change and develop over time, building with different representations of certain groups over time (which could relate to ‘Male Gaze’ and representations of certain groups), then the culture of one time could have a certain influence on the media products of that time. This would be different from today because the culture of today is different.

It could also be argued that this will only get faster, thanks to the power of the Internet. Certain things spread around the Internet so quickly that culture is allowed to progress more quickly than ever before because of this. This could make films more outdated perhaps. Also, with prosumers being more common, allowing for more people to create films, perhaps following the aspects of this theory, genres will change and develop faster.

However, in a contradiction to this, this could make for more universal films, which appeal to a wider audience. This is also because of the Internet. With cultures across the world being able to communicate and develop their cultures, a more common culture could be slowly developed, allowing for a greater number of universally loved films to be more easily created.

Neale – Genre Theory (cont.)

Changes can be incredible divisive, so this theory, when applied to the film industry could show that it takes more than one attempt at developing a genre to get it right, and successful. Not all changes are going to be successful. However, I think that this could be an interesting way to experiment with genres, by massively extrapolating genres.

With contemporary Hollywood films, a genre, generally, must only receive very small twists that are still large enough to help slowly evolve a genre and add something new an unexpected to help create exciting new films. The changes would have to be minute though since large scale Hollywood blockbusters are designed to reach a mass audience to make a lot of money.

However, with a small scale Independent film, the idea of genre could be massively played around with. They are more art-based pieces, reaching a smaller audience, which I think could allow for the manipulation of genre on a much larger scale. Since the stakes (making the film a financial success) are a lot lower, then this idea of difference could perhaps allow for experimentation, allowing for filmmakers to completely redefine genres to see what works.

This would be incredibly difficult I feel, but an interesting direction for independent filmmakers to venture into. However, since this would be more appropriate for use in an independent film, then I think although the concept of genre redefinition is something to be played around with, it would not be massively appropriate for a film like ours, because I think that we might be aiming for something a little more mainstream and generally pleasing, venturing more towards conventional Hollywood. This is due to the fact that the large institutions that make these blockbusters want film genres to be recognisable and comprehensive to the audience so that they are successful.

Cohen – Genre Theory

In 1986, Ralph Cohen published a paper called “History and Genre”. In this, he argued that: "genre concepts in theory and in practice arise, change, and decline for historical reasons.

And since each genre is composed of texts that accrue, the grouping is a process, not a determinate category. Genres are open categories. Each member alters the genre by adding, contradicting, or changing constituents, especially those of members most closely related to it. The process by which genres are established always involves the human need for distinction and interrelation. Since the purposes of critics who establish genres vary, it is self-evident that the same texts can belong to different groupings of genres and serve different generic purposes" (Cohen, 204).

Understanding what he said about genre is important in this paper quotation, since this particular quotation can relate to the ideas of other theorists. In particular, one part of this quotation says that:

“Each member alters the genre by adding, contradicting, or changing constituents, especially those of members most closely related to it.”

This relates to the genre theory by Steve Neale, since he theorised about the idea of ‘repetition and difference’. This quotation from Cohen supports this theory, since Cohen talks about adding certain elements of a genre (repeating) and also changing certain constituents (differentiating). With both of these theorists talking about the method of change when it comes to genre makes this aspect more important to consider when creating our teaser trailer and overall movie premise to advertise, since we will have to think about how our film may be represented in the environment of genre and what it has done to affect its genre. It is also important to consider this when actually making the teaser trailer, because if we add/change nothing to the film idea’s respective genre(s), then is has not really made a mark on the genre. This could closely relate to narratives also. If one was planning to make a sequel to a film, then it would be of strong importance that the sequel does something to change the new world that was established in the original film. If not, then it has changed nothing. This would mean that there are no repercussions to the world of the film, and the film would not necessarily be too successful, since there is not much of a reason to consume a film that has no effect on the world that was already established.

Altman – Genre Theory

Rick Altman, in his book, Film/Genre, proposed a theory called the ‘Semantic/Syntactic Approach’.

1. Semantic: This part of his theory focuses on the conventional elements of a genre that are communicated to the audience, such as props, characters, locations, etc.. For example, in a sci-fi, you would normally expect to see lasers/spaceships, space, and aliens etc..

2. Syntactic: This is focused on the relationships between these conventional elements and how the structure of the narrative is constructed around them, in that particular genre. This allows for more sophisticated analyses of film genres, and could relate to the idea of ‘high concept’ and universal narrative premises, that are often used to create successful blockbusters. High concept themes include: love, greed, hope and death. The characters and narrative of the film could be surrounded by these high concept themes.

This can then and was developed further by Rick Altman himself to create the ‘Pragmatic’ approach to genre, which now includes the relationship between genre and institutions/audiences.

3. Pragmatic: Institutions (i.e. production companies) may produce a certain number of films of different genres in any given year. They may venture into a wide diversity of genres to cater to a wide range of audiences. The number of films produced in a certain genre will change year on year according to the trends of that time, with certain genres falling in and out of favour. Science fiction appears to be making quite a large comeback, with a lot of blockbuster films in previous years and over the coming years being science fiction.

Altman – Genre Theory (cont.)

Horror also seems to be quite prevalent at this current point in time. One company has taken this further and as developed a large reputation for creating horror films: Blumhouse Productions. This production company has had massive success with the Paranormal Activity series of films, along with many others like The Purge, Insidious and Sinister. They have made other films in the past of different genres, however, they have developed a large reputation for making horror films, which could perhaps be dangerous for them when horror films fall out of favour. However, with a reputation to create satisfying horror films, they do have a successful reputation to rely on.

Audiences are then included into the pragmatic approach, with different audiences understanding films in a range of ways, re-creating the genres that they see. The audience has become more important in the relationship of genre, because films are becoming easier to make, with more ‘prosumers’ developing. This allows the audiences to actually create films that they want to see and are influenced by, which could influences the trends of genre further.

Genres and Genre Theory Discussion & Conclusion

Genre theory important when it comes to filmmaking in general, and it should be considered well when making a media text, a film especially. Understanding how genre works along with knowledge of conventions of different genres can make a film easier to make, since the director does have a certain sense of what to follow to fit or break convention with certain genres.

This overall helps to stablilise the production itself and make sure that is achieves success. This could link with the fact that there are a lot of sequels seen in Hollywood, or similar films; because it is more stable and safe, and the conglomerates are there to make money, and not necessarily to make massive genre risks when making a film because they cannot rely on it to make the film a success. Hollywood could follow a genre development style similar to Neale’s theory, with slow evolution, rather than ambitious choices, which would more likely be seen in a film more directed towards the art of the industry, which would be more of a niche, independent film.

For this reason, it is important to consider genres and genre theories and how we choose to follow or deviate from these could not only determine the genre that our film falls into, or how far we may evolve it, but the sort of film it is represented as. This will be important when thinking of what sort of studio our film will be suited to.

This affects our overall production because an independent film may have a different level of marketing than that of a mass market production that a conglomerate would make, as well as the genre it is represented as. This all affects the audience we will end up targeting our film to, through our teaser trailer (which is important to consider since we want to target a specified audience). To conclude, this must all be thought about and considered in order to judge how successful our teaser trailer is in marketing the film.

Now that I recognise and understand these conventions, we could experiment with the production and break these conventions to make the trailer more unconventional and different from the norm.