Trailer Deconstruction

In order to create our teaser, we have deconstructed the following trailer;Blood Diamond, this will give us an idea of what conventions are needed to create a successful trailer.
The film was nominated for academy awards and is a very dramatic action thriller in which the protagonist stumbles across a very valuable artifact in a very poor region of the world.

The trailer starts off with an establishing shot of the sun rising, which depicts the region of Africa with an atmospheric long shot across the mountains. Shortly after, the music kicks in with a slow and rising tone to denote excitement or fear, from this follows a helicopter rising very slowly out of explosions in the jungle. I think this going from very slow to an explosion is there to show everyone what will happen later on down the line, but not so the plot is ruined or the best action scenes are shown, just an epic cut from the film; depicted slowly in a slightly contradictory manner, in fact most of the trailer is set out in this strange manner, so as to cross the emotions felt from people between relaxed and agitated.

The credits roll with the music, every time the beat hits the name of an actor or name of a film fades in, there is several more establishing shots of the actors so they're mentioned with the shot of them acting, this creates a familiar effect with the actors so even if you do not know who the actor is, you can be rest assured you will either recognize them or find out at a later date. This technique also helps to establish a character's position in the film, for instance show the protagonist, antagonist and love interest. These being very stereotypical film roles were shown straight away on this trailer.
the camera again pans to the mountains and rivers of South Africa, and then the trailer gets back to the major storyline in order to keep the audience interested. The teaser remains at one very steady pace that is overly easy to keep up with, it is as if nothing happens, aside from this the trailers slow pace almost makes for a perfect setting of the story as the audience will not tire of it's story. The editing on this trailer makes it very tense, the suspense comes primarily from the very relaxed but tense music in the background, which matches the scenes in view, the actual diagetic sound is lowered from the film and is taken over by the non-diagetic music, this creates even more tension; as the viewer is compelled to follow the beat and in these situations when very blank and solid beat are played in the foreground a very dramatic war like feel is created, perfect for gritty dramas such as Blood Diamond.

MW

Below is a link to the Blood Diamond film trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtPX2kXhu7I