Trailer Reshearch - Time Traveler's Wife

We also looked at the trailer for the film The Time Travellers Wife. This is the full length trailer, un like the trailer we looked at for 500 Days Of Summer which was a teaser trailer. This film was directed by Robert Schwentke and gave us alot of inspiration for our own trailer, even though this is a full length teaser trailer and isn't a period drama like ours.

One of the aspects of the trailer that we particularly liked was how the titles/text in the film were shown. In most cases, apart from the main actor and actress's names, the titles/ text were shown on a separate clip/shot. This background image could represent sequins, lights or stars which will signify to the audience that this film has a supernatural twist and that it could involve magic. An example of these titles is shown here:

The film is based on a best selling novel

We liked this idea of having a separate clip/shot for the titles of the film to be shown, which we Incorporated into our own trailer. This was decided later on and the footage we used was footage we accidentally shot. This is shown here:

Another code and convention of film trailers is incorporating the main actors and actress's names into the trailer. With this being a common code and convention of film trailers we liked how the actors and actress's names are shown in this trailer, an example is shown here:

Eric Bana in The Time travellers as Henry DeTamble

We Incorporated a similar trailer by selecting a clip and using Live Type to create text and place it over a medium shot the main male protagonist and over an over the shoulder shot of the main female protagonist laughing. This signifies that that is the actor/actress, and if the actor/actress is famous this will help promote the film. An example of how we used the titles is shown here:

Another aspect that we liked about the trailer was the the extreme long shots of the main female protagonist running through the woods, this signifies urgency and connotes drama which helps to build up tension towards the end of the trailer so that the audience feel the sense of urgency and want to know what happens.

Racheal McAdams plays Clare Abshire running through the woods

This is helped by the fast paced editing that builds up to the end of the trailer. This is a common code and convention of film trailer and we have used this in our own trailer, but we had already used an extreme long shot of our main female protagonist running through the woods from our original trailer before we had seen this trailer, but found that it is a common scene to include in romantic dramas, it is also used the the Pride and Prejudice trailer.

Our main female protagonist running through the woods

Another aspect that really stood out to us from watching The Time Travelers Wife trailer was the music used. It starts off with a short tune and then sets into another song, this is the main song throughout the trailer, it begins with no lyrics and then towards the end of the trailer, when the shots are shorter and the trailer is building up towards the climax the lyrics are introduced to the background music, we found this very effective and liked the use of two separate pieces of music and fading them into each other at certain parts of the trailer, this we decided to incorporate in our own trailer.