Focus Group Feedback on Influential Trailers

Taken 2 Trailer Feedback:

Link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpaT8NzkLgE

• Logo of the distribution company
• Funeral shows death will be part of the film
• Voice over from character bridges over the action, gives backstory (narrative device)
• Establishes the location, establishing shot
• Violence is shown early on to grab attention, done in flashback
• Jumps around in time and space (moving locations)
• Explosions
• Loud stings alongside action
• Black screens separate present from past and breaks things up into sections
• Dramatic music cuts in and out
• Titles show when release is
• Important character introduction
• Introduces relationships
• Explains whose good and whose bad
• Music and location change, dialogue is narrative device
• See shots of the bad guys, but they are not privileged
• Represented as sinister, dark clothes/cars
• Loud drum beats are threatening and are used to cut on the beats
• Disruption in the story as mother gets captured by bad guys
• Dialogue again is a narrative device tells us whose been taken and the daughter is also a target
• Sets up the story for the rest of the film
• Attempts to make a resolution
• Action with fighting and guns to show you what will be in the film
• Chase scene
• Vehicles used
• Title with main actors name
• We don’t know what the resolution is (enigma)
• Trailer ends on a cliff hanger
• Main title of the film
• Loud boom as the final credit info comes on screen
• Legal stuff from distribution company

From this focus group feedback there are many, very important things that we can include in our trailer and there are things that I, as an editor, need to think about. Firstly, the style and placement of the logo of our distribution company within the trailer is very important and for our own product we can take influence from the effects and placement of the logo within the Taken 2 trailer; the logo itself is irrelevant as it would be the same for every film. Establishing characters and locations is something that is done early and falls under the category of how the trailer is structured and how we can follow this pattern in our own trailer. The structure that we could see from this trailer is that first the characters and location are introduced, then we get a sense of the threat in the film and how that affects the protagonist, this is followed by the motives of the protagonist and his journey to achieve his goal, the rivalry between the protagonist and the antagonist is shown and then finally we get the mystery of whether he achieves his goals or not just before the main title and legal information comes on screen. Another thing that will affect our product is the use of action and choreographed fight scenes, which is something we are going to have to think about including in our film seeing as the genre matches and the plot is similar, but this could be hard as these scenes take a lot of time and planning and usually require a decent size budget to pull off. The music of the trailer is very important for establishing the genre of the film being presented, it also dictates the pace and creates the emotion that you want the audience to feel when watching. This means that the music in our product will have to perfectly do all of these things and the sound effects will support this, this means that I will have to spend more time choosing and/or composing the music and sound effects for this trailer. The text graphics also give an indication as to genre and give the viewer information about the film such as release date and main actor, this means the titles I use in our product will have similar content but their style and colour will represent the genre and tone of the film. In the Taken 2 trailer they were dirty and dark and this represents this thriller/action genre well and represents the dark tone of kidnapping and the antagonists in the film well too.