Trailers – A Summary

Film trailers are a montage of clips from the film, outlining the key plot and characters, without giving too much away. Trailers are created to advertise the movie to the films target audience, and show the best parts of the film to generate interest. Usually you would see trailers at a cinema or on the television, but they can be found on the internet too.

Teaser trailers are shown usually a year before, and full trailers are usually shown half a year before.

Trailers are an example of multimodal text, they create meaning through a combination of different modes of communication.

Trailers usually include iconography of the films genre, the story brief, any famous actors/directors, good editing, the films unique selling point (USP), action and enigma codes (to tantalise audience and help them read the clips), eye catching and memorable highlights from the film, a voiceover to increase atmosphere and a soundtrack which usually adds to and supports the narrative and is mainly parallel to the action.