Did a lot of research on tv series trailers that you'd associate with the same themes/narratives that belong to our show. I thought it'd be a smart decision to watch all of these and get the general gist of how to create a successful trailer without giving away too much of the narrative. Also I wanted to see what techniques they used and how they portrayed their main protagonists in them, as I was struggling on how to approach my trailer in this respect. Also another thing I wanted to figure out is roughly how long they tend to last for. So i'll go through these and see what works and what doesn't and what i'll be applying to my own trailer after watching these.
People Just Do Nothing -
BREAK DOWN OF TRAILER -
- 1min long
- Involves all the main characters
- Shows the conflict of the protagonist
- Has at least 4-5 hilarious punch lines
EFFECTIVENESS
The trailer only gives you a slight taste of what's to come which I think is ideal for a trailer. It puts on a plate in front of you what you'll most likely get but with the signs of emerging conflict, i.e MC Grindah potentially moving out of his house with Misch, we won't know to what extent these claims are true until we've seen it. The trailers very effective in the way it lingers on shots and performances. It uses the one liners well, when Beats has his piece to the camera, his performance allows this shot to work because if he wasn't as convincing an actor as he is, these shots would not feel authentic and would therefore not be able to go into the edit. The music as well helps lift the tone and validity of the trailer, it makes it nice to cut to the beat and helps amplify the narrative within the piece. It gives the trailer a optimistic buzz which allows for a easy, comfortable watch. But I just want to highlight the fact that this trailer used it's funny moments in key areas of the trailer, and also used the dialogue as sound bridges to piece together scenes that didn't naturally flow. I can't emphasise enough though that it was the performance and script that made this trailer what it is, having a character speak with a great one liner can help piece together other unrelated scenes because the dialogue has great comedic value.
Further more it definitely appeals to it's target audience, and you can tell who what the target audience age range is by the way it's presented within the trailer. Through the use of the performances and dialogue, the shots and music used, also seeing the channel it's being shown on, you'd give it a guess of say about the age range of around 16 - 25? Just because of the stylised editing, cinematography and music is what you'd find being shown to around that particular age bracket, as well as the content of the show.
Peep Show -
BREAK DOWN OF TRAILER -
- 1min long
- Involves all the main characters
- Shows the conflict of the protagonist
- Has at least 4-5 hilarious punch lines
- Shows moments of characters losing their mind/showing them at their weakest point
- Used montage of clips of protagonists instead of longer clips of only a few scenes.
EFFECTIVENESS
With the trailer being so short, it's difficult with a programme like Peep show to know what to include. But I feel this trailer is perfect as it uses a montage of clips which highlight the hilarious humour between the main protagonist's in the new upcoming series. These are all new fresh scenes, and as you're only seeing fragments as long as 2-3 seconds, this leaves you immediately wanting to know who they're responding to and what the context of the dialogue is. You know it's only showing you a glimpse of the entertainment because if that was only a minute, then what happens in the hundreds of minutes not shown yet. It was an extremely teasing trailer, with no real plot shown or path to even hazard a guess. I think i'll try to apply this kind of trailer technique to my one as I feel our project doesn't have a lot of hilarious long scenes, just more shorter and cheekier scenes that would fit well nicely cut together.
Fleabag -
BREAK DOWN OF TRAILER -
- 2min long
- Involves all the main characters
- Shows the conflict of the protagonist
- Has at least 3-4 hilarious punch lines
- uses less scenes to cut between in comparison to Peep Show & PJDN.
EFFECTIVENESS
You can tell that this series has a slightly bigger budget than the rest, not just because Amazon is a sponsor, but with the trailer being slightly longer at 2 mins, over a minute longer than the rest. I feel this is an immediate sign that they have to try and sell this piece as best as they can by giving it the most time possible to engage it's viewers/target audience. You're presented with the main protagonist in several scenes, they're about 5-6 scenes used, lasting the duration of the 2 minutes so that's about 15 seconds for each one, equating to a much longer time spent on scenes than the other. The trailer wants the audience to know how the brain works of this character, because she is the star driving vehicle of this production. What I mean by this is that the actress, Phoebe Waller-Bridge drives forward the show by her presence alone, as she's relatively big. She's obviously a fantastic actress as well but these go hand in hand with one another. The trailer clearly states that she is the main focus of this narrative, especially with all of the breaking of the fourth wall scenes, which is still a technique that most people aren't used to seeing in a sitcom. This supporting the narratives themes and tone of the piece by allowing the audience to know that it breaks some of the conventions of a sitcom, thus showing signs of the shows originality and creativity. This is a great tactic to use to try and get in new viewers.
Freshmeat -
BREAK DOWN OF TRAILER -
- 40 seconds long
- Involves all the main characters
- Shows the conflict of the protagonist
- Has at least 3-4 hilarious punch lines
- Uses less scenes than Peep show, to emphasise depth of detail in characters.
EFFECTIVENESS
This trailer is shorter than the rest but uses the time wisely by presenting each character within a scene saying a piece of their own dialogue, which encapsulates them brilliantly. We know immediately from the trailer which character is odd, which character is up tight, which character is lazy and which character is sheer bonkers. I feel this is helped immensely by the performances though and the script. They're made out to be believable characters by the script and the performance, so we buy into these individuals and see them not as actresses/actors but as the characters they're meant to be. The music is utilised very well, it suits the piece and conveys the tone of the narrative perfectly with it being music that is urban and contemporary, appealing to it's target audience. The performances, just like the others stated above are fantastic at delivering their lines with really believable character traits that make you forget they're even acting. I'm beginning to struggle on my search for some scenes which deliver this for my project. I want to try and portray our best lines but I can't find many that are laugh out loud funny, or that present the character in a humorous way. I think i'll go with the Peep Show style and hopefully use the montage edit effectively.
I noticed with all of these pieces, they presented scenes that were really playful and demonstrated the characters in their perfect form. They also all deliver on portraying the funniest side to each character, and their traits would also be lay bear for the audience to evidently see. In addition to this, there are a lot of one liners, which are used to great effect and allows us to gauge the comedic levels of the piece, as in how far out there the series is and the potentials of all the characters. This is something that i'm definitely going to try and figure out on how to do this with our project. But I think the main technique i'll be adopting is from Peep Show, with the montage effect, hopefully we'll have enough scenes to cut up and create something visually disjointing and funny to watch.
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