The Conventions of a film trailer

                Conventions of a film trailer

The main convention of a film trailer is to promote the film itself as this is the most important part of film marketing. There can be many versions of film trailers for one specific film, there’s the teaser trailer that shows the most exciting parts of the film and then there’s the actual trailer that adds extra details in. There are many trailer versions of one film as some of them can have certain content that is unsuitable to play on air before the watershed. Film trailers do not give away any crucial/important plot ideas this is to avoid giving away too much information and ruining the effect of actually watching the film. The name of the film is placed at the end of the trailer followed by the date it is released in the cinema. The names of the actors in the film are shown throughout the trailer just so the audience know who to expect to be in the film. This is another way of advertising a film as if the film has an audience’s favourite actor in it; it is more likely that they will go watch the film. Some film trailers have the quote “from the director of……” to interest the audience if the film that has been quoted was good then the film being advertised must be as well because it’s made by the same person. There is on most trailers the masculine voice over that reads out the main points in the trailer. Music is an important aspect of the trailer as it can portray what type of genre and can also add emphasis on the dramatic bits or the scary moments. The trailer normally has the production companies’ logo either at the beginning of the trailer or at the end, they show the film classification that the film has been given by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) this is to show what is the minimum age that is suitable to see the film such as if it was a 12 rated film you would have to be 12 years old or older. It’s common for trailers to be fast passed although it could gradually speed up as the trailer gets more dramatic, the location of the filming is not the same throughout the trailer this is to show the audience other parts of the film to make them wonder what the character is doing at that specific location.  The length of trailers differs they can be a few seconds long to a few minutes long, although with film trailers every second counts to sell the product that they are advertising.