Terminator 4: Salvation (2009) - Official Trailer

Link to the video.

Terminator 4: Salvation

The trailer starts with a traveling shot down a bleak dark road, the colours are dark and plain colour scheme, this helps to set the mood for the dark atmosphere that the film gives. Over the course of the entire trailers, there is a flickering effect, that is reminiscent to watching a film on an old T.V that occasionally cuts out the audio as well as the sound. This helps the movie feel more post apocalyptic and desolate, the scratchy and distorted voice over and audio help to add to this feeling of desolation.

The Columbia pictures logo is also distorted which adds to the effect and helps to continue to the mood with out breaking the immersion, which I thought to be a nice touch.

A tank tread is seen to crush a skull, this adds both a feeling of dread and militarism, which points  at the film being partly a war film with a lot of army based fighting and conflict.  The next shot is that of a man hiding behind an object, while a search light is clearly looking for him, this continues with the theme of conflict, the man is almost entirely encased in shadows and darkness, making him look mysterious.

There is then a series of fast paced explosions and action shots, which shows that there will be a great deal of action, there is not a clear view of what is actually going on, this creates more mystery and drama.

The next shot is that of a forest, again it's not clear who's in the forest or what's going on, but some unknown entity is breaking trees with apparent ease, this adds more tension and drama to the scene.

The next shot is a high angle shot of a man hanging in a parachute on a broken power pylon, this shot hints at death and further shows that the world is in disrepair. There is then a shot of the pylon in a long shot, again showing the man still hanging, and a unknown figures enters the frame, this again adds more drama and tension.

The lead actors name then is displayed "Christian Bale" this shows who's in the film, as a large fan of the actor might be attracted to see the film, just because one of his favourite actors has a part in it.

The next shot is that of a unknown human looking figure is seen to be staring, unflinching at sevrel dust filling explosion that are happening in the back ground of the shot, this adds mystery to the chacter of the figure, and adds more tension in to the trailer.

The voice over then says "this is John Connor" which then leads to the actor Christian Bale holding what looks like to be a flare, which immunimates his face, this would be a very large clue to what the film is, as previous fans of Terminator film series would recognise the name and the basic plot line of the film.

The following shots are fast paced flashes on images which adds both drama and tension of the scene, the clips are shown to creshendo to a climax, as the Terminator theme tune begins to play (which links in with the conventions of previous terminator films), in syncrination of the image of an explotion flashing up on the screen. This adds drama and tension.

The tag line "The End Begins" flashes up one word at a time, this helps the message to sink in, and creates more serious feeling to the message. The title and the release date show up shortly later, all the same font, this creates a sense of fluency to the trailer.

After the release date is shown, John Connor is seen to be pointing his gun at the camera, this links back to the militirism that has been shown previously in the trailer, a machine is then seen to appear behind him, and John then turns around to face it, as this is happening the music climaxes which brings about a dramatic end to the trailer.

Genre

During the planning stage of our project, we disgust many different type of genre, we decided on the horror genre above all, we also considered other genres of film, such as:

Action

As a great fan of action and martial arts film, the first thought that came to my mind was an action film. After careful deliberation I realised that because I lacked both the required skills and know how for a respectable action scene, the action sequences (which are the main hook of an action film) would be of a b-movie quality.

Some examples of action films are, Die hard, Drunken Master and Gladiator.

Comedy

A comedy film was also considered, but then we thought that a differing sense of humour could potentially ruin the film for someone, Also if the film was not found funny then the project as a whole would have failed.

A few examples of the Comedy genre are; Clerks, Step Brothers and The Water Boy.

Science Fiction

Making a sci-fi film trailer, would suffer that same problems that making an action trailer would suffer, due to a lack of know how and expertise, the trailer would quickly start to look like a cliched b-movie.

Some well known Sci-fi films are Blade Runner, the Star Wars series and The Terminator series.

Westerns
As iconic as western films are, recreating a western film's mandatory sunny, sandy back drop would be quite difficult. Another problem would be creating the right mood and setting for the time period. Since both of these things would be difficult for us, we decided against it.

Some examples of western films are, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Chick flicks
The genre know as "Chick Flicks" are commonly aimed at teenage girls, the stereotypical chick flick conventions are, rival, love and school.

Some exmaple of chick flick movies are, Means girl, Angus thongs and pefect snogging and john tucker must die.

Fantasy
A fantasy film are a large iconic genre of film, although with out a large budget and a large special effects studio, they are a lot less breath taking and visually stunning, for example Lord of the Rings would not have been as impressive or a stunning if all the of the orcs were running around in paper mache hats.

Some examples of the Fantasy genre are; Alice in wonderland, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Conan the Barbarian.

We finally decided on making a horror film trailer, for the following reasons:

Horror
We thought that a horror film would be the easiest to make since most of the themes, the violence and the horror would be implied in a trailer and implying things can be done with single shots and with talking and voice overs.

Some examples of Horror films are The Thing, Dawn of the dead and the Saw Series.

Horror has many sub genres and which gave us a wide selection of sub genres to pick from, here are some examples.

Zombie Film
As a fan of zombie I was very intent at 1st of doing one, after some in depth research in to the sub genre, I concluded that the zombies would end up looking like people who have just been painted red, and with out the large 200+ crowds of zombies sweeping around like they have on the studio produced Zombie films, the film would be lacking an sense of urgency.

A few well known examples of the Zombie Genre are: Dawn of the dead, Black snow and Evil Dead.

Psychological Horror films
Psychological Horror films are being increasingly more popular. We took some aspects of this genre since Psychological horror films are, I find personally more terrifying than a hack and slash style film. The typical conventions of a Psychological film are; playing on a characters, fears, guilt and vulnerability, as well as using eerie sound effects and relevant music as well as using the characters emotional instability.

Some examples of Psychological Horror Films are; The Shining, The Ring and Psycho.

Slasher films
Slasher films are among the most common of all the horror sub genres, they contain a strong use of gore and shocking sites and images. We used aspects from this Sub genre in our trailer.

Some well known Slasher Horror films are The Texas Chainsaw massacre, Halloween and Jason X.

Monster Films
Another genre of horror films are the monster films, which involve large and usually ugly monsters destroying towns and cities. The main problem is making a monster film is that with out a company of special effects experts it won't meet moderns standards which would lower it to b-movie quality.

Some examples of monster films are, Godzilla, King Kong and King Kong vs Godzilla.

The Last Exorcism

The Last Exorcism is an American 2010 mockumentary horror film about a girl who's become possessed by the devil.

The main object in the centre of the frame, is the little girls, who's clinging to the wall like some sort of spider. This adds a uneasy feeling to the poster. The girls shadow is also a prominent figure of the poster, as it takes up a large amount of room. The girls face is mostly concealed by shadow,this adds a sense of mystery to the trailer. The girl is also dressed all in white, which is a change from the stereotypical black, which the villains usually wear, although since the girl is being possessed she could still be technically be the villain.

The colours of the poster, are mainly very plain and bleak, this also adds to the horror element of the film, the room also looks very gritty and horrible, which adds to the mood of the film even more.

The Last Exorcism is in a horror style font, this again adds to the mood of the film, we can tell this by the way it is distorted and rather creepy looking. 

The tag line, "if you believe in God, You must believe in the devil" points at it being a film with religious and satanic themes, which would coincide with the reputation of the 'Exorcism' Films.

The names of the Directors and other key staff are in red, whilst all of the other font is in black, this makes the key names stand out more, possibly attracting more of an audience, while also crediting the actors and key talent.

Harry Brown

The film Harry Brown, starring Micheal Caine as the title character. The film has very dark and mature themes, ranging from social comentary to gun crime.

The 1st thing that catches your eye in this poster, is the large target, which also contains the title, actors and produces, the white, blue and red could be a reference to 'the italian job', another film that famously started Micheal Caine. The red and blue, are the brightest colours in the frame, which is immedietly eye catching, the target is also similar to a mod symbol from the 1960's, which could also be a reference to Caine's age.

The figure on the right is clearly reconisable for many people in Britian, which could attract views for the film. His large dark clothing hints at him having a dark persona, as well as the gun in his hand, his grey face, half covered in darkness, also hints at him being evil or the "bad guy". He also contrasts to the white back ground, this further hints at him being a criminal, or a law breaker.

The writing at the top is red, which would hint at violence, and the high rating reviews are a good way to attract people to watching the film.

OLD BOY

An English Version of the poster was difficult to come across.

Old Boy is a controversial Korean Film, which revolves around kidnapping, revenge and 15 years of false imprisonment. 

The scratched effect and the distorted effect that has been put adds great effect to the mise en scene, giving an impression of a dark surreal atmosphere. The font is miss matching and also scratched which also adds to the feeling of grittiness. A feeling of speed is also given, with the scratched blurriness.

The pose and facial expression of the man in the poster would denote violence, particularly with his hammer raised in that over his head position. The main character is giving the gaze, which can be used to  draw in people to the artifact.

The colours of the poster are very dark and surreal tones, this helps to prepare the audience for the dark surreal and a slightly disturbing themes of the film.