Timeline of Drama Films

 

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, sexuality, poverty, class divisions, violence against women and corruption put the characters in conflict with themselves, others, society and even natural phenomena. Drama is probably the broadest movie genre and includes subgenres such as romantic drama, sport films, period drama, courtroom drama and crime. This timeline demonstrates the progression of Drama films from the early 1950's, when they where used as teaching tools to the 2000's with biopics to epics.

Beast of the Southern Wild Trailer

Does it follow the typical conventions of a drama trailer?
In this trailer the elements of the drama genre aer shown cleary through the emotive music and narrative. The voice-over gives you a sense of emerison into the lead protaganists story. The trailer builds up by showing equilibrim at the beggining, follows with a threat 'the storms coming' and then concludes with a climax.

Does it follow the typical conventions of a theatrical trailer?
The trailer includes comments from reviews that promote the film 'Transports us to world wrapped in poerty, wonder and magic'. It includes production logos at the begining of the film, after the title of the film is revealed a short ending clip provides a light-heated outro that reveals the credits. The trailer length is 1:59, this short it comparison to the average length of most theatrical trailers which can be 2-4 mins.

Theatrical Trailer Conventions

The Dark Knight teaser trailer

Does it follow the typical conventions of a drama/action trailer?

This trailer follows some of the typical conventions of a drama/action trailer including; that it is narrated by the characters from the film and there is dramatic non-diegetic music. However there are also some conventions that this trailer does not follow. Usually in action/drama films there are clips from the film giving an insight to watch the genre is by the characters, props and locations used, however this trailer is more reliant on the effects and colours used, for example black is typically used to represent drama.

Does it follow the typical conventions of a teaser trailer?

This trailer follows the typical length of a teaser trailer being 55 seconds long. It only has a vague release date, ‘summer 2008’, and the production logos are used at the beginning of the trailer which is are typical conventions of a teaser trailer. This trailer also reveals the title of the film near to the end of the trailer, which is normally when the title is revealed in teaser trailers. Usually in a teaser trailer there are small amounts of clips from the film used, however in this trailer there are no clips so this trailer does not follow the all the typical conventions of a teaser trailer.  By using no clips the main characters from the film are not introduced, which is usually done in a teaser trailer. 

Batman The Dark Night Trailer

The trailer starts with an aerial shot of bat man and the city to set the mood of a dark city, the dark night. Batman is standing on the edge of the building, this could mean that he is on the edge of weather to help or leave, giving the audience a question of whether he will be the hero or stand back.

The logo of the production company then comes up, warner brothers. But the logo has been changed to fit the theme of the film and had clouds and a dark night behind the logo can be seen.

 

 

We then are shown batman jumping into the city and into the dark night from above. This show us that he is on top and therefore under control of what is happening and is going to jump into the drama and action of what will happen in the film.

The trailer then takes the audience to a dramatic line taken from the film said by the joker ‘year ago any of these cops and lawyers wouldn’t darecorss any of you I mean what happened?’ ‘its simple. Kill the batman.’ As this comes so early in tne trailer it gives a drematic twist into what may happen in this film and what batman will have to face. This then sets the mood for the trest of the trailer. At this point the trailer tunrs from a blue cold and calm colour to a yellow/orange tint. Drematicing the action and giving the shaddow of fire thropuigh out adding the feel of action and explosions everywhere.

the next shot is of lots of people in suits, this gives the impression of importance due to the tall buisness like buildings, running away from something. This has scereaming and the jokers laugh over the top which could insinuate that they are running from the joker, but also leaves them wonding if they are running from batman. This is a rule for trailers to not give away to much of the plot and posing questions for the audience that they will want to answer so therefore watch the movie to find out.

The drematic cut to the explosion then reveals the action in the film, showing the auidience clearly whyat the genre of the film is. All of these shots are all done in 48 secconds.from this I can see how fast the cuts have to be and how much the trailer gives away about the film in a short period of time.

We then see bat man on his bat bike which is a defining feature of the movies and is the first thing we see that shows batman as batman in action.

The screen then turns black. And has a voiceover taken from the films narative and turned into a story telling line. this keeps the voices recogisable and more drematic as the audience will recoginse who is saying the line and relate this to the charicter. This is another good way of given some of the plot to the audince awithout thenm being able to make too much sence of it and therefore wanting to see the film.

We the see a series of shots from the film that continuously show action and imposteant individual plots from the film, some of these are love, action, the joker, and batman himself. We see the joker with a gun to show that he is the one that wants batman dead, the audience can see that he isshottin out of control and therefore may kill others in the piorcess, but he doesn’t care as his goal is to kill batman, this could klead the audnce to wonder why he wants to kill batman so much.

We also see the joker thretening tne girl envolved in the film, this takes  different approach to the audince as it accosiated love to the film, which is primarlay an action film. Which inturn could draw another kind of audience tio the film.

The final line beofre the film title if shown is a man of whome we are not told his name says ‘ you either die a hero, or live lonmg enough to see yourself become the villan.’ This leaves sthe audience with a laqst questuion, levaing them wanting to know is batman stays the hero, or beomes a villan. This could relate to many tyoes of villan including a villan to the city, to the joker or to himslelf.

Finally the films title the dark night appears. This is on a black background, with blue wrighting. And the batman logo outline slowly apppears behind this and then leaves just the batman logo. Almost every trailer shows the logo at the end as that is what the audience will remember most. The logo is impostant as it defins the movie and can show a lot abouit the tyoe of movie it is. The logo for our trailer thereofre should be well made and reflect the film well as it will be used on posters, websites and the tralier.

Something I have noticed a lot, inclusing this trailer, is that as the end of the traler after the title comes up a small scene will play, normally bringing humour to the end. This leaves a finished feel to thebtrailer and also leaves the audience with somehitn to remember as it will be the last thing they see. It is important to make syure the trailer jhas a consistant level of action or interesting scenes from a film as the whole thing ahs toconstanly keep intising the audience so that they go and see the film.

Django Unchained - film analysis

Teaser Conventions

                               

Drama Films

Genres

History of Film Trailers

Brief

We are Drift, an A2 media group from Weald Of Kent and our brief is to create a trailer with a poster and a website, either teaser or theatrical, and for a genre of our choice