RESEARCH: Film Education

Codes and Conventions of a Film Trailer

This is a questionnaire that I took on the Film Education website that allowed me to test my knowledge of the Codes and Conventions of a film trailer. Once I had answered all of the questions I checked my answers using its interactive facilities as it tells you how many of them you have answered correctly. 

This can be accessed following this link: Film Education Codes and Conventions Questionnaire

On this Film Education site there are many other tools, pages and documents of information which helped me learn about film trailers, how to make them and how to analyse them. I have used their framework to make my presentation on what I have learned about the codes and conventions of trailers.

Making A Trailer

After looking at the Codes and Conventions guidance provided by Film Education I continued to look through the website and found a portion of the website that give guidance and help on making a trailer. This page provides worksheets and the bottom that give very helpful guidance into making a film trailer. This page also gives you the chance the create your own trailer using a variety of clips, titles and soundtracks from a film. The film provided is A Good Day to Die Hard, directed by John Moore. This is an incredibly helpful activity as if gives you the chance to experiment with how a trailer is created and what needs to go into it. 

Making a Trailer Guideline document

From this document and activity I learned many things, for example I learned that a good soundtrack can make or break a trailer. This trailer maker gives you quite a few soundtrack options and depending on how you compiled the clips to make your trailer you have to be very careful on the soundtrack you choose and if it actually works with the trailer or not. I also learned that to create a successful trailer you have to have a huge array of different clips to choose from to give you enough variety when editing to create an intriguing trailer that people actually want to watch.



Link to mini trailer

The page also provides a set of 3 questions to answer about the film and to show what you need to be thinking about when analysing and making a trailer.

What information can you find out about the film online? Think about where the idea for the film comes from, and any other related films.

What sort of audience do you think this film likely to target?

In what ways might the trailer for this film be pitched to appeal to the audience/audiences for the film?

These questions are very helpful as they guide you in a very simple way to gather all the information you should have before you start to analyse or create a trailer of your own.