The poster for the release of the remade Omen film uses a mixture of imagery and iconography to illustrate the basis the of the film, playing both on what the viewer see’s and of what they know from the previous films. The film was released around 4 years ago for the only time we’ll ever see the date 6/6/06, obviously highlighting ‘the number of the beast’ in Christian belief, centred around the coming of the antichrist and the eve of the apocalypse. The clues of the iconography given here are the emphasis on the date 6/6/06 at the bottom and in the black text above the boy. The ominous Christian imagery shown would be the shadow that extends down from the ‘O’ of omen that appears as an upside down cross, suggesting a sign of the antichrist.
The elements of the poster that make it obvious that the film is a horror would most likely first be the colours. Everything in the scene is toned with a de-saturated blue, with a very high contrast. The backlighting gives light blurred edges to the trees and the figure, and the field of focus is very shallow, highlight the boy at the forefront followed by the dog and the menacing and sinister looking trees in the background, masked in thick white fog that plays on a pathetic fallacy. The way that all the trees are bare and almost silhouetted makes the scene look very cold and unnerving. The sharp thin branches surround the scene in a very disturbing manner, to help add to the horror feel.
The boy himself has a very unnerving look about him. His expression is very mysterious and the shadow covering his face makes him seem like a threat to the viewer. His eyes can just be seen in the shadow making it seem like he’s looking directly at the viewer with a suspicious motive. He’s dressed for winter, confirming the cold atmosphere of the poster. The boy is midway through swinging on the seat he’s on, giving a transitional period to the scene, and the innocence of a child playing on a swing contrasts well with the serious, sinister face given off by the child. This is a large clue towards suggesting that the child is cursed or not completely what he seems. The Rottweiler next to the boy is also a menacing features at it sits almost completely silhouetted and the breed itself has quite a few connotations that suggest a fierce, violent nature. The eyes of the dog are even highlighting, making it look very unnatural.
The text in the poster has an ominous feel to it. The font is serif and gives it a formal look, highlighting that the film is very serious and dark. Its plain black, adding to that theme, and there’s been a slight vertical motion blur applied to the text, making seem as if the text is emerging slightly, giving it its own creepy aura that adds to its imposing appearance. On the date at the bottom a yellow/golden outer glow has been applied, giving it a biblical look, informing the viewer that the film is based on beliefs of Christianity. The upside cross has been used again as bullet points to separate the days, months and years. Overall an impending menace is portrayed in this poster, linked to Christian belief, giving very much a ‘calm before the storm’ impression.
This teaser was originally pulled from being publicly shown due to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. The World Trade Centre is featured towards the end of the teaser trailer.
The audience is not told whether the footage in the trailer is from the film or not. It is not from the film but this doesn’t matter; the purpose of the trailer is to make the audience aware of the fact that a film adaptation of one of the most loved comic book heroes is coming to the silver screen.
The trailer’s early editing style puts more emphasis on continuity compared to some teaser trailers (for example, compared to The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Teaser Trailer). Continuity of the robbery is kept by the abridging the scene to show viewers key events. The establishing shot and digetic sounds of a busy city tells the audience the time and place (Day, New York) of the events that are about to follow.
The series of tightly edited shots set a certain pace to the trailer reflecting the non-diegetic rock music. Excitement and thrills are ultimately achieved which will undoubtedly help the anticipation for the film.
At the end of the abridged scene it is revealed what the film being advertised is based upon: Spider-man. This is achieved by showing the iconic image of an oversized spider's web. This wholly relies on audience's prior knowledge and shows the importance and effectiveness of iconic imagery. This is also demonstrated in the The Amityville Horror trailer which was earlier analyzed.
The final stage of the teaser leaves the continuity which was used earlier in the trailer behind. After the excitement and thrills provided earlier in the trailer the teaser now tries to sustain the excitement whilst transmitting important information. For example: when it is coming out, slogans attached to the film and (most importantly) the title of the film. This is all achieved by titles (opposed to the use of a voice-over) which are cut with footage of Spider-man swinging through New York City. The title's animations is befitting with the pace set by the song being played 'Leave you far behind' by Lunatic Calm. The futuristic text style is kept all the way through the trailer constantly reusing a flash to introduce a text whilst tracking closer in. This helps to build a text style which can be used in print advertisement as well as digital advertisement.
This is a very effective trailer and achieves exactly what some claim a teaser should achieve:
It creates excitement and anticipation
It divulges little information about the plot: it is only clear that the film will be based upon a crime fighting superhero
It builds a style (through texts and iconography) which can be replicated in future advertisements whether it be a digital or print advertisement
And most importantly, it achieves it in a small time frame (1:46)
The Spider-man teaser trailer illustrates that by using an abridged scene with a tight editing style can be effective when trying to create anticipation for a film. It also highlights how important a teaser trailer can be in the advertising process for a film: Columbia Pictures built a whole new scene with a high production value just to create anticipation. Another trailer that has been seen to adopt this type of editing style includes the teaser for Cloverfield where an abridged scene from the film itself is shown. Our group will definitely consider the use of an abridged scene when producing our teaser trailer.
The trailer begins by fading into the production titles and then into the scene of an abandoned industrial park of some sort. The sound of a heavy echoing drum accompanies the transition for dramatic effect, informing the viewer that this trailer is going to be serious and foreboding in its theme. There are straight cuts between landscape shots of the environment with a heavy sound of wind whistling, making it seem more barren and lifeless. You can hear a person’s panting coming into shot through the use of a sound bridge. Everything has a blue tint to add a more melancholic tone to the entire scene that plays out at the start of this trailer.
Eventually it cuts to a shot where the figure of a man runs into eyesight from behind some rubble, as if being chased as he looks behind him. His appearance is accompanied by quick beating of drums to add dramatic tension, and a choir singing in a minor key fades into earshot, giving that gothic sinister sound. Then as the cars appear another track adds to the music being upbeat drums that make the chase tense and fast paced. The shots quicken in pace slightly, ranging from looking at the man running up in a medium shot as it tracks to follow him, to a point of view shot from the cars which has been over cranked, as if this shot is an outer body experience of the person running as he realises his inevitable capture. Eventually the man reaches a warehouse and people stop their cars heavily, and a sound bridge occurs as one male shouts “Kruger! Come on out, you sick bastard!”. The shots become close ups of the opposing characters where the man chasing Kruger shouts “You open this door Kruger!”. This cuts to a reverse shot where Kruger is facing the door and replies “What do you think I did? I didn’t do anything!”. The dialogue adds tension and mystery as to the plot behind this scene and as tension continues to build the intrigue increases.
The shot cuts to the man throwing a Molotov cocktail into the warehouse, where an over cranked shot shows it breaking through the window and setting the entire place on fire. It cuts to a close-up of his feet to a medium shot of the character taking off his coat as the fire blazes around him. This shot has been over cranked to highlight the dramatic scenario, perhaps reflecting the characters view as he witnesses his own demise. It then cuts to him ripping off the coat to reveal a black and red striped sweater, a piece of iconography associated with the Nightmare on Elm Street brand.
This then eventually cuts to a black screen reading ‘From Executive Producer Michael Bay’ in sharp red serif font, with a slight texture of splattered blood around the text, highlighting the horror theme presented in this trailer. The sounds become reversed drums, giving an eerie element to the dramatic moment of silence as the tension drops for just a moment before beginning its steady climb back up to the crescendo at the end of the trailer. There are then fades to shots accompanied by the same reversed drum, but the transition out of the shots are cuts instead of fades. The first shot is that of three girls in classic looking dresses playing jump rope. However this has been over-cranked as well, adding an eerie tone to the imagery and contrasting elements between the innocence of children and then foreboding dynamic of the editing and sound. The shots start to revolve around the dialogue of a woman saying the words “I’ve been having these dreams about this man… and he’s burnt”. All the shots leading up to the extreme close-up of the distressed young woman contain a sound bridge of her saying this dialogue.
The trailer then cuts to a shot of a street sign post with the name ‘Elm Street’ on it, confirming the conjecture of the audience concerning the basis of the film. Eventually the shots then cut to the extreme close-up of the hand wearing the bladed gloves, running the edge of the blade against the metal tiles, creating menacing screeching sounds that plays to the conventions of a typical horror trailer, where the imagery is as menacing as the sound. This shot reveals the man wearing the bladed gloves moving closer to an innocent looking figure in the background, demonstrating the impending evil. In the background you can hear children singing a nursery rhyme like song with lyrics that relate to the approach of Freddy Kruger, the evil spirit of the man shown at the start of the trailer that kills teenagers and children in their dreams. All of the following images are surreal and sinister in their own way, from the children standing in a cage, to the shot of a boy naked in the freezing cold, to shot of a woman lying in a bath as the bladed gloves rise out of the water, moving towards her.
The pace gets faster after the shot of the young man saying “Don’t fall asleep”, where the cuts between shots become more frequent and the sound of the reversed drums get faster in tempo as well. You can also hear distorted eerie tones that seem to pulsate with the disturbing images as well. There’s a moment of silence before the shot of the boy’s head behind grabbed which has been heavily under-cranked to add to the fright as it happens quickly in an attempt to make the audience jump. From here onwards there’s a sound of reversed whooshing sound that happens every half second where the cuts match the onslaught of audio occurring, that seems similar to an exaggerated blink of an eye. The transitions between shots here are very fast fades to black, to seem like the images are pulsating out of the screen for impact, tension and distress.
Around the point where the young man shouts “wake-up!” continuously you can hear the rise and fall of violins being played in sharp minor tones to add confusion and even more tension. In the mise-en-scene, special effects are used to make the woman appear to be rising out of bed in mid-air, as even being attacked by a phantom of some sort. This confirms the paranormal element of the horror in this trailer as it cuts between the woman being attacked to the silhouette of Freddy Kruger approaching in what appears to be the same warehouse he died in, linking the start of the trailer with the rest. There’s a moment of silence before a loud scream (also playing to the convention of horror trailers) and the image of Kruger is shown, slashing at the screen, where special effects are used to make three slash marks glowing red appear and fade in the text ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ which is similar to the first text in its blood red serif titling, which also has a glowing red vertical directional blur that makes it appear that the text is full of an evil aura. After the only shot of the phantom Freddy Kruger before he attacks a defenceless woman, the same text is used to present the credits and date for the release of the movie, which slowly zooms into focus on the screen.
This trailer is an example of how an abridged scene can be used at the start of a trailer, to give it more of a teaser trailer feel, as the long scene doesn’t give away too much of the plot, but adds tension and intrigue, presenting a window into the narrative of the film.
The trailer begins with the production titles accompanied by a rather ominous low pitch sound that is hard to identify. There is the sound of a man attempting to light a welder although this is not apparent until the first shot which shows a welder lighting up and the sparks flying onto the face of a man who is unknown wearing glasses. There is then another shot of a different man removing his glasses he looks tired and sweaty this suggest he has been working hard all day. The screen then fades to black and the sound of a man most likely in a mission control centre saying ‘thirty seconds and counting’ this is linked to the launch of a spaceship into space and the countdown before the launch. This noise is heard during a black screen there is then a succession of shots, which show different people performing construction a large structure.
During an intermission between these shots the text ‘the Future begins ’ is shown this is the same in most teaser trailers, which have text intermittent between shots. It is not apparent as to what the structure is. This is accompanied with the sound of welding and other construction noises and famous quotes which are related to space missions that have happened in the past for example ‘the eagle has landed’ which is famous from the first moon landing. And also ‘one small step for man one giant leap for mankind’. It then cuts to a shot of the bottom of the ship and you can see construction happening all over the ship showing it is still under construction.
There is then a crane shot showing the bow of the ship through some scaffolding on the bow of the ship is the name ‘enterprise’ which is the name of the starship in the first star trek shows and films and so from this point it is apparent what the film is. As this is happening there is also the famous soundtrack form the original show which will be know by any original star trek fans. As this music begins you also hear Leonard Nimoy say the infamous words ’space the final frontier’. The music then crescendos and the screen fades to black . Then the famous symbol from the original star trek appears on the screen. The icon is an everlasting symbol of star trek and is so recognizable that the production did not feel the need to put the title of the film in the trailer.It then fades back to black and the words ‘under construction’ appear on the screen this is a play on the theme of the trailer which shows the starship enterprise under construction. It then shows a date and title. The trailer then ends the trailer only has roughly 15 shots In it which is like most teaser trailers.
The trailer begins with the production titles Columbia. Accompanying the production titles is eerie sounding background music. We then see the first shot of the Himalayan Mountains where we hear a loud drumming noise at a constant tempo in the background along with the eerie music. The next shot shows a monk running up a mountain towards the temple > The next shows the monk running towards the temple from a different more close up angel the drumming noise is joined by the sound of a bell chiming the two sounds are out of sync so one drum goes and then the bell goes. The next shot shows the monk bursting through ht doors of the temple there is a sense of urgency in the trailer. It then cuts to a shot of another monk sounding the bell that we hear earlier in the trailer however this bell is out of sync with the others making three separate background drumming noises one after the other constantly repeating. You can also see flags in the background that are blowing violently showing there is a lot of wind this is a symbol of things to come.
The screen then fades to black and the text ‘how would the governments of our planet’ it then cuts to another shot of the monk banging the bell and in the background the shot of a mountain, which could be Mount Everest. The screen then cuts to black again and the text ‘prepare six billion people’ appears this is linked to the text seen earlier. This is like the other trailers we have analysed where text is put into the trailer intermittent with shots from the film. The text is normally put in to explain a little more about the trailer. There are more background sounds of about five different drums all out of sync joined by the sound of a symbol at fast pace slowly getting louder and faster building up to a crescendo. There is another shot of the priest from a different angle banging the bell. We have not been shown any other parts of the film and are not sure about what is happening. It then cuts to another piece of text saying ‘the end of the world?’ this piece of text has a question mark on the end symbolising the end of the sentence that has been shown. The music at this point is hectic with lost so different sounds playing it is hard to identify what sounds there are.
There is then a shot of the mountain being covered in water this is showing the end of the world as we can only guess that the entire planet is covered in water. The water is filling over the mountains showing that nothing to tall will stand in its way we then see another shot of the monk looking onto the distance it is obvious he has seen his impending death. The next shot show the temple bathed in water and completely destroyed the music then crescendos and stops as the screen cuts to black again. The text ‘they wouldn’t’ then appears on screen implying that the government’s would not warn the public and it would be a disaster of biblical proportions. There is then a large drum sound and the title 2012 appears on the screen it then fades out and the text ‘find out the truth appears’ the trailer is playing on the concept that the governments of the world would perform a cover-up if they knew that the end of the world was coming.
The trailer begins by using the diegetic sound of gunshots to establish its threatening atmosphere. The screen remains black and the audience is focused upon these menacing sounds creating a sense of curiosity on the viewer’s behalf. The trailer is then kicked to life by the sound of a television switching on accompanied by a quick distortion on screen; this makes the events appear factual because its being presented as a television broadcast. The grainy black and white picture also establishes the time period of the events in addition to accentuating the sinister feel of the trailer because of the harsh contrast between the blacks and whites.
The editing is quick with the sound of razors on violins prompting a numerous amount of cuts. A lot of information is transmitted in this opening sequence. There are close-ups of newspaper headlines, one reading ‘possessed’.
There are also interviews with police officers who narrate the action which is happening on screen giving the details of the horrific events “I have never seen anything like that…” The non-diegetic sound of a low pitch instrument (most possibly a drum or a bass guitar) accompanies the diegetic sound casting and continuing the overall ominous tone. Throughout this sequence, and the trailer, the text fades onto the screen almost like it is slowly condensing giving the trailer another depth of tone; a cold and eerie one.
The purpose of this opening sequence is to establish the threat before introducing the helpless to it.
Once a familiar style title, which helps the continuity of the piece, informs the audience that the ‘Luta Family’ has moved into the house we are presented with a home video of the Luta family moving in. The smaller square aspect ratio of the film and the sound of active film reels once again emphasize the time period that the piece is set in.
This would be a happy and perhaps comfortable sequence for the audience if it were not for the distortion made to the sound of laughing children. It makes it a more disturbing experience because the symbol for innocence, children, have been made into an unsettling reflection upon the house. This sequence serves to set up the family whilst foreshadowing their sinister fate.
After seeing the home video we enter the final part of the trailer. This is characterized by the mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. For example, the sound of lighting and screaming is mixed with the amplifying sound of violins. It is interesting to note that nature (explicably weather) is used to reflect the atmosphere and emotions of the characters (pathetic fallacy). In the home video the weather was calm and sunny (almost representing the calm before the storm). The use of quick cuts, usually in time with flashes of lighting, quickens the pace of the trailer intensifying the threat through the action taking place on screen. We see a variety of frightening images, for example: arms appearing out of a bath, strange pale eyes, a face of what would seem a dead man etc.
This is my Blog for A2 Media Studies at WGSB. I am working in a 3 member team with Tom Bowman and Joshua Reeves, aiming to create a film teaser trailer.
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