Sunday, 26 September 2010

Textual Analysis of 2 trailers




The first trailer I will be analysing is called Ransom. Which is an American thriller film starring Mel Gibson and Gary Sinise. Is directed by Ron Howard and produced by Brian Grazer
Kip Hagopian and Scott Rudin and was released in 1996.

The trailer starts off with showing the distributing company logo, Touchstone Pictures with its own background music. The main actor is then introduced with the caption underneath showing his name and what his job is. He is wearing a very smart suit which shows that he is a wealthy person. As a chairman of endeavour airlines he tells the audience how he became a successful person while a gentle piano music been played in the background, and his family is the important thing in his life. All of a sudden there is big bang background sound with the distributing company but this time with animation, which shows the audiences that something bad is going to happen in the following scenes. You then hear someone saying “I have your son, give me 2 million dollars or you will never see him again. The camera then focuses on the main character and his wife with close up shot for the audience to see their reactions. At this point, there isn’t any background music, and then you hear another big bang sound with the caption of the director’s name. There you see a telephone ringing; the camera zooms in to the telephone, and just before the main character picks it up, a detective stops him, and tells him that his son is the main priority, and he should not risk of doing anything silly, or his life could be in danger. There is a low angle shot from underneath a glass table showing his facial expressions. From here everything goes wrong, the happy living family’s son has been kidnapped, and the detective starts to investigate about his case. The narrator tells the audiences what is going on through the trailer. The main character then goes live on TV, so the whole world especially the kidnapper see him being upset and is willing to give the price to him. Some scenes are then being shown that he is trying his best to get his son back in any under circumstances. Another big gang sound effect and caption showing “from the director and producer of Apollo 13. So the audience that loved that film are more likely to watch this one because the same director and producer have made it. Also afterwards the director decided to introduce all the secondary actors, as another way to attract the audiences. And finally at the end you see someone shooting, and the next image you see is the main character’s wife screaming, to leave the audience with a cliff hanger. The speed of this trailer starts off with medium; it then slowly speeds up till the end of the trailer.



Taken is a French action thriller movie. It is directed by Pierre Morel and produced by Luc Besson. Starring Liam Neeson. He plays a former Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary operative who sets about tracking down his teenage daughter after she is kidnapped by Albanian slave traders while travelling in France.

This trailer starts off with its distributing company, 20th century fox. Then you see some young girl who is dressed beautifully and is around 18-21 years old asking her dad if she can go to Paris with a friend of her as a birthday present. And because her dad (Liam Neeson) is very kind, he allows her to go. Suddenly there is a big bag (similar to the Ransom trailer) and her daughter’s phone rings. He asks her why you didn’t call when you reached Paris. And as she looks out her window she sees someone kidnapping her friend called Amanda from the other side of the room. Suspense background sound begins to play as her daughter starts to panic, her dad then tells her to go to her room and hide under the bed. Then he says “the next part is very important” at this moment the suspense music starts to raise its volume in order to get the audience fully focused to the upcoming scene. “They’re going to take you. “ the screen splits into three different images, one is showing the daughters facial expressions with a close up shot, second is showing her dad nervously telling her that they’re going her with another close up shot and the third image showing a person with black boots and black trousers coming toward the camera which would be a point of view shot. A huge flash is then edited as the girl gets dragged by her leg as she is screaming at the same time. The next shot shows the dad talking to the kidnaper while a very strange piano music being played at the background. As he is talking to the kidnapper, bits from the movie scene are being shown, in order to sync everything that relates to what the dad is talking to the kidnapper about. A then toward the end he says “I will find you, “I will kill you! These are very powerful words to say to someone who you don’t really no. The kidnapper then replies say “good luck” and hanged up the phone. The editing is pretty fast for this type of film. Therefore it is very good in order to grab the audience’s attention.

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