What is a Trailer? What is a Teaser Trailer?

A Trailer:

Trailers consist of a series selected shots from the film being advertised. Since the purpose of the trailer is to attract an audience to the film, these snippets are usually drawn from the most exciting, funny, or otherwise noteworthy parts of the film but in abbreviated form and usually without producing spoilers. For this purpose the scenes are not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the film. A trailer has to achieve that in less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

A Teaser Trailer:

These advertisements are called "teasers" or "teaser ads". A teaser trailer for an upcoming film, television program, video game or similar, is usually released long in advance of the product, so as to "tease" the audience.

Man of Steel

Released: 2013

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Genre: Action/Superhero

We thought that the Man of Steel teaser trailer was in essence perfect. It enticed the audience and still left them wanting to see more which is exactly what an effective teaser trailer should do. However when watching it, it in some way disorientates the audience due to the fact that it's so alien to the usual traits that a superhero film possesses. For example, throughout the majority of the teaser trailer, the shots aren’t shown in a particular order to follow a narrative for instance. Many shots were also of vague character and not necessarily related to any characteristics shown in the superman franchise previously.

The combination of both these images and the light operatic music feels as if you’re watching a trailer of the drama genre. The tone of the music in addition to the low lighting provides the audience with a sense of sadness up to the point where the voiceover starts. This is when the images and tone of music become lighter and of ‘happier’ connotations relating to the narrative “We will give the people an ideal to strive towards” and “In time they will join you in the sun” insinuating brighter and new beginnings. The audience can also start to see more shots that relate to the superman concept For example the Boy pretending to be superman by wearing a red cape. 

In addition to changing the tone of the trailer, the voice over adds an omniscient quality to the trailer.               There is an evident lack of the mentioning of the film franchise. This is due to the fact that Superman is an extremely established character in the world of superheroes. The audience are only shown references to the character. For example, the boy dressed up in the cape. This is until the very end, where the music stops completely and the film title ‘Man of Steel’ fades in to a black background a clip of the supposed ‘Superman’ flying through the atmosphere barrier then cutting to the superman symbol fading into the black background.   

In retrospect it is probably easier for the makers of the franchise films such as superman and the dark knight trilogy to make a successful teaser trailer without giving much away due to the success of previous films. But the fact that this trailer is so alien to what people would expect regenerates interest, intrigues and encourages the audience to go to see it in the cinema which is what makes it an extremely successful teaser trailer.  

The Human Centipede 2

Released: 2011

Directed by: Tom Six

Genre: Horror

This teaser trailer was definitely typical of its genre through the use of sound (diegetic and non-diegetic), mise-en-scene, clips shown and titles. As this film is a sequel we thought that it was probably easier to make a teaser trailer and still entice the audience as they already know/can guess what the film will be about. 

The first piece of text we see on the screen is a production company logo which immediately tells the audience the genre of the film. Unlike many horror production logos, this one ‘IFC Films’ doesn’t have a picture or animation of something scary and the name doesn’t have a reference to horror. However, the colours and animation are all very dark and murky as well as the text flickering and being reflected above. This, combined with the music starts the trailer very well and immediately intrigues and potentially slightly panics the audience. 

The rest of the titles are written in a clear font however some of the words and letters are distorted and are more slanted and jagged than the rest of the text. The word ‘shocking’ has been changed here which puts emphasis on the word and makes it stand out subtly telling the audience how extreme the film is. The screen has been made to look like its flickering and the white cloud behind the text is moving, which adds to the tension and build up that the music and sound effects are creating throughout the trailer. 

The teaser trailer is only 50 seconds long but for the first 23 seconds we are shown clips from the first film. As they had used the clips the diegetic sound used was from the first film whether it was dialogue or screams. We thought this was very effective because not only did it remind you of the first one but it also meant that not so many clips from the second one were needed to be shown which could have given too much away. It also gave a way of the credits introducing the new character, Martin, and they show us two separate clips of him. One is the only piece of dialogue when a woman, we assumed his mother, is telling him how disgusting he is and the other is of him dancing around with a crazed look covered in blood. This shows us a sort of mental deterioration from him being obviously a shy and disturbed man, dominated by this female in his life to a crazed, obsessive psychopath. 

We thought that this trailer was very effective as it gave away as little as possible but still intrigued the audience. As we said previously it was probably easier as it is a sequel so people would assume the plot based on the first film.

Pompeii

Released/To Be Released: 2014

Directed By: Paul W.S. Anderson

Genre: Action/Drama (based on historical event)

I think that Pompeii is a good example of a teaser trailer as it doesn’t give enough away to ruin the plot but it shows enough of the film to give the audience an idea of what it will be about and whether they would want to see it or not. Also as Pompeii was a real place, and the majority of people know the story of what happened there with Mount Vesuvius, part of the trailer and the title tell part of the story already. 
I thought that the beginning of the trailer was really interesting with the remains and ruins of the tragedy and the voiceover speaking about what happened. I think that the diegetic sound behind sounds almost heavenly like angels as it's very high and light which contrasts with the voiceover which is very deep and builds suspense with the line 'The greatest secret still waits'. This entices the audience without giving anything away by implying that there is a lot more to the story.
When first watching it, I felt that it was typical of its genre as an Action/Drama due to the suspense building music and voiceover. The shots of the remains add to this because they show the end result of what happened rather than the beginning like many other trailers. 

The music change to a piano and then a soft rock song show that the film contains elements from other genres such as romance and it shows clips of the action as well such as fighting and the actual volcano. As far as we know it doesn't show the clips in the correct order and shows clips of events that potentially happened leading up to the main action. There are no titles apart from the date of release and we don't see any dialogue on screen which I think is effective as it shows the audience there is a lot of action throughout the film. However the first time I watched it I thought that the clips shown looked like they were all taken from the same part of the film so it may put some people off going to see it if they think it appears as only an action film based around very little time.

Robocop

Released/To Be Released: 2014

Director: José Padilha

Genre: Action

Robocop was the strangest of all of the trailers we looked at because it showed none of the film and instead chose to make the trailer look like an advert for weapons and anti-crime strategies. Although it looked like an advertisement, the audience could not be confused about it being real as it was advertising very unrealistic products but it was also very artificial with a combination of the music and voice over. 

The music at the beginning of the trailer is very upbeat and fake as the 'advertisement' is saying that the world will be a better and safer place with their products from 'Omnicorp' (the made up corporation). The cinematography of the trailer is very high key lighting and looks as though it is being played on a computer as their is selections made on screen throughout. Although we found this a very clever idea and intriguing for the audience we also felt it was very confusing because minus the voice over speaking about how these products will protect cities and keep citizens safe, there was no hint about what the film was about. Personally I felt that the trailer made me want to see the film to find out what it was about but many audience members may be put off as they wouldn't know whether it would be the kind of film they'd want to see.
The strangest part of this teaser trailer is that the title is never shown on screen so people wouldn't even know what film they were watching a trailer for and instead may assume the film was called 'Omnicorp' as that is what the trailer ends with. The website at the end is also misleading as it gives more false pretence of the film.
Compared with the Human Centipede and Pompeii trailers it has many aspects the same as they are all teaser trailers that show minimal clips of their films. I think that this is because all of them are either a sequel, based on historical events or a remake. This means that they are all already known in some way and need little explanation.