Dark Night and Inception posters

The Dark Knight poster and the Inception poster are both very similar in their layout. This is because both the films have the same director and are using the same marketing styles and techniques. In both posters the majority of the layout is taken up by buildings which dominate the skyline and the poster, also in he Dark Knight poster the character known as 'the joker' has his back turned the Inception poster follows suite and Leonardo Dicaprio also has his back turned. Both the characters are also holding things in their right hands, the joker is holding a knife and the character played by Leonardo Dicaprio a gun, these are both weapons signifying that their charcters are either violent during the film or are the villains. Both poster also are brightest in the centre and as you move further out from the centre it appears to get darker. These two posters being the same is an example of intertextuality.

History of trailers

The first ever movie trailer was shown in the US in November 1913, it was created by a man named Nils Granlund who was the advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theatre chain. The trailer he made was a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, which was opening at the winter garden theatre on Broadway. In the trailer featured short clips of the rehearsels for the show. Granlund was also first to introduce trailer material for motion pictures, he using a slide technique to promote a film featuring Charlie Chaplin in 1914. Up until the late 1950s, trailers consisted of key scenes from the film being advertised often with large descriptive text describing the story. Most trailers had some form of narration those hat did had a very dominant males voice played over the top of the trailer. a very good example of this is the 1950's trailer for Walt Disneys Cinderella.

In the 1960 motion picture trailers changed. They became textless and montage trailers and quick-editing became popular, this is because of the arrival of the new Hollywood era and techniques that were becoming increasingly popular in television. One of the better known for their trailers at the time was Stanley Kubrick who favoured the montage technique. A great example of his work is the trailer for Dr. Strangelove.

The modern day trailer consists of a soundtrack that can quickly build suspense and just as quickly slow the tempo down, fast cutting often action scenes that do not give away too much of the film. Often one film will have many different trailers including a teaser trailer which is just a shorter version of the main trailer.

Inception Trailer analysis

This trailer for Inception does not give much of the film away, although it shows some short action clips and diologue it still leaves the viewer pondering what the genre of the film is and what the story and the plot are. The effect that has on the audience is that it intices them in and makes them want to know more about the film, so they have to go and see it for themselves. The soundtrack to this trailer is very important because when the music pics up the scenes in the trailer get faster and the cuts from one to another are also much faster. The soundtrack also plays a big part in building up the suspense. During the trailer just before the tempo pics up it displays 'from the director of the dark night' by doing this the film is automatically associated with the dark night through the director and because the Dark Knight was a very popular film the audience then thinks that Inception is also going to be a very good film. The trailer does not give away any of the characters names but in most of the clips Leonardo Di Caprio features leading the audience to believe he is the main character.