Teaser Trailer Research..

We have decided that we're going to produce a ROM-com teaser trailer, so we have researched other ROM-com trailers to get an idea of what conventions we have to keep to and some that we could challenge.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mC5mszSPGc
This film trailer starts with the media institution, in this case there are two- Universal and Working Title which only takes up 3 seconds of the 1:28 production. It then leads on to an office scene where we meet the main character 'Bridget' who is on the phone to a mystery guy who we do not meet until halfway through the conversation. The conversation is broken up between sentences with clips of phrases about Bridget, such as '70 shags', '6 glorious weeks' and '1 flawless boyfriend' which gives us an insight to her life. It then cuts to the mysterious man on the other end of the line, introducing him as another main character. Then it cuts to a white background where they introduce the characters as "he's back" and "she's back" with a montage of images of them both, this suggests that this film is a sequel, therefore having no need to name the actors as they are already known.

Never Been Kissed (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d97O5zOBwcw&playnext=1&list=PL46FB69CB2660C2BC&index=32
This film trailer also starts with the media institution- 20th Century Fox, with music and a voice over on top of the image. It then leads on to give us the basic outline of the story using quick cuts on different scenes using a montage. We understand from the footage that the lead character 'Josie' works as a journalist and is given the opportunity to go back to school undercover as a 17 year old to write an article. Josie was never in the popular crowd when she was younger and takes the advantage to make a new name for herself. She ends up falling in lover with her teacher and because he believes her to be 17, cannot let the relationship develop. The shots are broken up with title screens saying 'never been hip', 'never been cool' and 'never been sexy' these are read out by the voice over person, who also says 'in a story about getting a second chance to make a first impressioon' which creates the story in your mind before you have seen the film and also acts as a tag line, we would like to use this effect by using a voice over and a tag line in our trailer. The film title is shown twice with in between shots of her and then shows a title screen of bands/artists that are included on the soundtrack, which we don't often see in a film trailer and then it just simply says 'spring' for the release date which I think is effective but not very informative.

Made of Honor (2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVK9V8XGKXY&feature=related
This trailer is one minute long and only 2 seconds of it is made up of the institution title which in this case is Columbia. It immediately focuses on the main character - Tom who we gather is a popular guy from the montage of different scenes with his friends. The voice over says 'Tom has his guy friends', 'Tom has his girl friends' and 'Tom has his best friend' which is also displayed on the screen with clips of his friends in each situation. From the trailer we understand that the film revolves around Tom and his best friend Hannah. Tom is a ladies man, while she wants to get married but just hasn't found her perfect man. Whilst Tom is starting to think that he has fallen in love with Hannah, she announces that she's engaged and asks Tom to be her maid of honour. His friend persuades him to accept so he can attempt to stop the wedding and win her over. All the footage is shown in the form of a montage and at the end the title is shown is also read out but the voice over man.

From this research, I can conclude that most ROM-com teaser trailers start the trailer with the media institution sequence, which we intend on doing. Most of them also have a voice-over with music in the background and play their footage in the form of a montage, we have planned on trying to recreate this image. We have agreed on saving the title of our movie until the last few seconds of the trailer like the other teaser trailers that we have seen. This is so the name will be fresh in the viewers mind and will be less likely to forget it. What we haven't seen in these trailers is the actors/actresses names, we have discussed doing this in our production but haven't come to a firm conclusion.