Conventions of Trailers and Posters

What is the purpose of trailers? Is it to give an inside as to what the film will contain? Is it to try and draw in an audience that the producers might not have expected to draw in?

Every single trailer and poster that can be found in today's society, all contain information about the film, some of which isn't even words, it can either be the pictures you see on the poster or what you view in a trailer. The generic things that are seen when looking at a poster are: Rating, release date, actors and directors, title and institution. When looking at a trailer, you would see all of these pieces of information including: Inter titles, narration, reviews and soundbites. The genre is also a vital piece of information that can be found when looking at both a trailer and a poster. All of these pieces of information give the audience an idea on whether the film is good or not.

Trailiers also use the technique of not showing the ending of the film in the trailer. In most types of genre, whether it be action or horror or romantic comedy, the trailer seems to build up to a really dramatic point (which could be from either the beginning or the end of the film) and then the titles appear, leaving the audience in some kind of suspense, making them want to go and see the film as the trailers always have no ending, which in turn, is how the film generates revenue. Without trailers, films might not be majorly broadcasted.

All trailers appear to have an equilibrium which then becomes disrupted (or lost) due to something happening, then after some recognition of the disruption, action is then taken to install a new equilibrium, but the new equilibrium is never shown at the end of the trailer. Like I previously stated, this is done to ensure that the audience actually watches the film to find out if the equilibrium does become restored at the end of the film. This narrative theory was created by Tzvetan Todorov.

Conventions themselves: When it comes to the conventions that are used in trailers, a lot of them have already been covered, but some that have not been mentioned are: the fact that all trailers are between 1 and 3 minutes long and that trailers use editing crescendos and flashing transitions. These conventions plus everything else mentioned throughout this piece make up how a trailer is made and what it's purpose is.