Tuesday 18 June 2013

Analysing a film trailer - Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

After looking at the codes and conventions of the three films, I decided to analyse the Moonrise Kingdom trailer further. This film was released in 2012, and directed by Wes Anderson. As I mentioned before, it is of the 'Rites of Passage' genre. In this post I will discuss the use of codes and conventions used in the construction of this trailer.


It is clear from this trailer who the main characters are from within the first few seconds, as a scene from the film introduces a young boy (Sam) and the young girl (Suzy). As usual from trailers, no specific spoilers are given, but the plot is established - that the two run away together. This is a common convention of a trailer, to establish the main characters and plot. As well as introducing the two main characters, during the trailer, other smaller characters are introduced, through snippets of dialogue and scenes from the film. These characters are not developed, however, due to the fact that this film contains several well known actors, within the second half of the trailer, clips of the characters are accompanied by the names of the actors on screen. This is more of a common feature of a mainstream Hollywood  film trailer.

This trailer starts quite unusually with a scene from the film, with no music in the background, only the dialogue from characters. These clips of dialogue are consistent throughout the trailer, and they act like a voice over, letting the audience know what the characters plans are for the film and therefore a brief overview of the narrative. However, it does not give too much away - it still holds back enough to make the audience want to view the whole film.

Snippets of dialogue are very common in most film trailers and are used for this purpose. The 'snatches' of dialogue are joined by the accompanying scenes from the film, most of them portraying the most exciting moments. These are shown in many jump cuts towards the end, as it builds up with more dramatic music, creating a lot of suspense (known as 'the rise' of a trailer). At the end of the rise, the film title is displayed against a slow motion scene, which gives the audience a chance to read it before the trailer goes into the turn line - a point in which the music dies down for a single line of dialogue after the build up of music. Again, this is an extremely common feature among most film trailers.

As well as a list of the cast and the title of the film, the writers are also given credit. This is due to the fact that Wes Anderson is a well known film director and Roman Coppola is a well known film and music video director. This is a common convention when the names of the writers/ directors are famous. A lot of trailers usually have quotes from newspapers or magazines to promote the film, however in this trailer, this seems to be absent. This may be due to the famous cast and director, but it is still an anomaly for a film trailer.

Below is the official trailer for Moonrise Kingdom from YouTube.


This film is in the 'rites of passage' genre, and so I will not be looking at this for inspiration, however, I love the interesting cinematography components that are Wes Anderson's signature. I hope to feature interesting cinematography in my own trailer, to make it interesting and engaging for the audience to watch. 

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