Research task - medium research

Research task - medium research 

For my idea I have chosen to do a trailer or short film of the war genre, I have been looking at trailers and short films so that I can see how they are done and how I can make my product effective and gripping.

With the ones I have looked at I have noticed that they get into the action fairly quickly as things grabs the audiences attention and keeps them interested in what is happening. For example in the trailer for 13 hours: the secret soldiers of Benghazi it gets into the action which keeps the audience hooked to it and wanting more, the use of shots and angles as well lead to create more suspense and further interesting the audience, for my product I will have now ear the budget that this film had but u will be able to use some of the shots I have seen and use them to try and replicate the same effect on the audience that the trailer did.

For another trailer I saw, which was the trailer for Dunkirk, I saw that it was a short trailer and did not use complex shots, however the way they were shot and the mid en scene within the shot is what created the suspension, and also the use of sound as it had the sound of a clock ticking which is really effective in creating a sense of danger and fear as it could signify that time is running out.

I watched a short film that was made by a YouTube film maker, however the editing and effects that were added made it seem like a much higher budget short film, the narrative was simple but the use of shots and editing made it stand out. In the short film they used a wide range of shots, varying from close up to long shots and these allowed you to see the characters and also get a sense of the surroundings as the longer shots were outside which made you eel like there was more room and when the characters went inside the shits were much closer which gave it a sense of being claustrophobic and almost with the characters. Two shots that caught my eye was the use of a birds eye shot which made it feel as if you were watching them move from above, almost like from a drone and directing their movement, and the other shot was a first-person view shot which took you to the centre of the action and gave you the feeling that you were actually there, it also makes you feel like you have some sort of momentary control of the character.

While watching other media products it became apparent to em that if the film/trailer was set in a historical war, such as ww2 the mise en scene was much darker and film than if it was set in a modern day war, such as Iraq, This is probably due to the geographical locating that these are as ww2 was in Europe and Iraq is brighter. This made me think that by changing the mise en scene it also gives you the ability to predict which era the film is set because if you see that it is dull and muddy then it seems as if it might be a ww2 film. However some films subvert this and change them around, for example Behind Enemy Lines is set in a modern war but the mise en scene is rather dark and dull which subverts both the mise en scene and where you would originally think it would be set, as you might think it would be set in the desert, but it is set in Eastern Europe.