Trailer Research: Dark Knight

Micro At the beginning of the trailer there is a shot of the makers of the film, the 'warner bros' followed by the 'legendary pictures'. Both in dark black and grey colours, the colour scheme has been changed deliberately to portray a dark and eery message. The audience will suspect from this that the film could either be a action film or horror. The film is likely to attract a significant number of males due to the colour scheme used.

Once these sign appear a fade to black is used and instantly gives off a dark, spooky theme. The audience is likely to straight away be attracted to the film knowing the film maker company as 'Warner Bros' is a very successful and produced many successful films. The trailer then straight aways has a voiceover on the fade to black clip, the voiceover is a male voice, very deep and comes across very negatively. The voiceover is off screen sound (the characters cannot hear it). The voiceover explains the basis of the storyline so that the audience has a rough idea and encourages them to watch the film.

In the film trailer dark knight there are 69 cuts used. They start off slowly then as the trailer carries on the speed increases. A lot of fast cuts are used and this quickens up the pace of the film.

There are a lot of panning shots used in the trailer to Dark Knight. This establishes the setting and the characters within the area's. This gives the audience a sense of where the film is set and what type of city is used.

A faster pace is built up again by quick cuts of different locations.

A fade to black is used again after the panning shot shown on the right, this again relates to the title dark knight, being very dull and gloomy.

The second shot portrys a over head panning shot.

The shot on the left portrays high key lighting image as it is quite bright, due to the burning fire, however through the trailer many shots are low key and this builds up a lot of tention and the audience feeling edgy.

The shot of the explosion above is also a hook in the trailer as this will attract the audience a lot more to go further and watch the fil or buy it on dvd.

Macro The hook of the trailer is very intrieving as you want to know what happens between the joker and batman. Even though the themes are very bulging throughout the trailer, the parts where the joker is shown adds comedy to the film and this is also shown through the make-up used and his costume. Although the joker plays a important role throughout the film his costume does not portray a important character that appeals to the audience as paying much interest in taking him seriously.

The shot above also reveals the hook of the trailer that will appeal to a number of males as explosions are seen as fascination and they are likely to appeal to males more than females. A lot of questions are asked which will encourage the audience to go and watch the film or buy it on DVD as they will want the answers to be revealed, These questions are also a hook in the trailer and will leave the audience in suspence.