Genre
The genre of World War Z is horror/thriller. This is because the basic plot is a mass outbreak of a disease which turns people into zombies its unleashed at a world wide scale. The main hero is followed throughout the film in an attempt to survive the zombies and find a cure. Zombies are very common in horror films and director Marc Forster has amplified other films zombie outbreaks into a world wide pandemic which can potentially kill over 60% of the worlds population. From different aspects of the trailer we can see the different points at where it shows that its a horror/thriller. Such as when they are trying to escape from the city in the camper van a zombie runs and head butts the glass. If played in slow motion you can see where the zombie makes connection with the glass, the sound to go with this is horrific too to add maximum effect into one simple minor event on the entire film. This is used to embrace the audience in the trailers the smallest things can make audience attention increase dramatically.
Title
The title for World War Z is unique, the normal text is formal but the Z standing for zombie is 'rugged' and 'tatty' to resembles the infectious texture of a zombie. This title in this trailer is not shown until the end of the trailer which, for my research is the most common place it can be and to know that a horror film has a chosen to put it in this location in their trailer motivates me to mine in that same location. The way the title is presented is that it fades from black slowly, this slow animated movement is amplified by the sound. The song plays all the way through and every so often a long percussive note plays which has the power to send a shiver down the spines of the audience. The song is called "Philadelphia" by Marco Beltrami. I liked this song so much I am going to research his other songs and see if there is one I can use for the main track for my trailer.
Location
The location for this specific is across the world in world wide cities such as Philadelphia, Jerusalem and Seoul. The film is about a world wide zombie epidemic therefore it is normal to have all these locations in it. Normally in horror trailers they are either set in a woods or haunted house. Therefore will need to do more research and analysis into other trailers so I can assess the normal setting for a trailer from this genre.
Sound and Narration Overlaps
The narration on a film trailer in a very common convention in general. In the trailer I am analysing there is a lot of evidence of narration overlap. At 1.56 there are clips shown on the trailer put with with narration which is dialogue from the film but from completely different. parts of the film which shows that you can mix things up in the trailer if they work well from sound overlapping through dialogue. This dialogue usually states something about the storyline such as rhetorical questions such as if they will win or not or how the situation is at that particular time in the film.
The Length of Shots
The length of shots is very important as they have to advertise the film in two minutes or less so therefore they have to pack lots of different aspects of the film such as a basic introduction to the plot and a few clips showing the major action scenes. The length of clips is usually 1-3 seconds unless there is a long piece of speech at the beginning to be able to establish the setting. The lengths of shots are very key in this trailer as the fast pace scenes build tension and excitement for the viewers as adrenaline starts rushing when we have a P.O.V shot whilst being chased by a hoard of the undead. The film with the highest ever recorded shot length was done by Alfred Hitchcock, in his film "Rope". The average shot length (ASL) is 433.9 seconds, this is the highest ever recorded as the film is only 10 shots in total but the editing was done so well it looked like one shot, this is a direct contrast to World War Z an the shots are very short in length and get the point across very well for the amount of information that has been condensed into 2 minutes of filming.
Pace
The pace of the shots is key in this film trailer as even though it is a horror/thriller it has many actions and they are widely known to be very fast paced to show tension in the clip. Sound is normally loud and short so the clips have to be short and fast so that they match with each and get across the message in as quick as they can. For my trailer my clips will starts off slow to build tension then ascend into short fast paced clips. This is because when the action starts happening the audience are not ready for it and therefore it creates more of reaction rather than jumping straight into the action.
Editing
Editing in this trailer is very key because it is half action, half horror they need to balance out the various editing techniques as there are different techniques for different genres. Such as for a horror film the colour correction has to be darker than normal to suggest an eerie setting whereas an action scene would be bright with explosions and gunfire. Below are evidence of these two aspects from the trailer.
Action
Horror
Another aspect of the editing I have noticed is that is the cuts. There are only special transitions when text is being shown. I have seen this happen many times in trailers as it gives the title an effect which is supposed to emphasise the importance and create it as memorable as possible. However there is another effect that I would like to view which this trailer does but not as well as some other trailer. The effect I am talking about is flash cuts or blackout cuts where this a flash of white or black that has a significant sound. As I mentioned before the song by Marco Beltrami, the percussive ending of that song is the sound that matches with the blackout cuts in this trailer. I will find another song when creating my trailer I really like the idea of this as I could do smaller ones to build of the finally which would be the ultimatum point of my trailer is mots likely to scare the audience when they view it.
Narrative Elements
The narrative elements in this trailer could be either two things general. hey actually get a narrator to speak, or text appears or film trailers such as this one, have neither. This means I will have to do another analysis on a film with a narrator by speech text. As I would like to do with text this doesn't
help me much but it does show that a film trailer doesn't need narration.
