Essay 8

For this essay, the assignment was to select a film sequence and then analyze it using the concepts in the notes. I decided to select the trailer from the upcoming release, "The Hobbit".

The success of the previous three Lord of the Rings movies shows that the directing crew and editors are doing something right in the filming of this film, but here I will dissect the individual elements that make the new trailer so appealing.

Although there is a sample of the soundtrack in the trailer, there is also a preview of the dialogue. Since this is a very action packed movie, in order to clench the audience of the trailer and heighten anticipation for the movie, there is a lot of the fast paced action and dialogue shown.

The variety in camera movements of these action scenes helps add to the excited mood of the trailer. The director of the movie and the editor of the trailer chose a very nice variety of change in both orientation and position. Of all the camera movement types listed in the notes, all seem to be used. One of the strong aspects of these films is the scenery and all the different locations of filming (or computer generated landscapes). There is a large portion of this trailer where the camera pans across long landscapes. Many of the most groundbreaking scenes used in the trailer are where a character is saying something pivotal to the plot and the camera motion uses a lot of dolly, tracking, and crane motions to create the various moods of what is being said whether the focus of the shot is on the speaker or the character(s) that are reacting.

Because this is a trailer, there is a lot of editing, cutting, and compression between the shots in order to make the trailer as "short and sweet" as possible. It would be an extremely boring trailer if there were long scenes of casual chatting or walking from point A to point B. The distances and gaps between the clips leaves it up to the imagination what will happen next until the viewer goes to see the film! As far as expansion goes though, it is not used here in this trailer because once again, it would make the trailer much too long and boring.

I find that this trailer captures the audience's attentions fabulously and the variety in the shots and subjects creates the perfect mix to create anticipation for this film and I would not make any changes.

Trailer -->  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSoD4BBCJc