How is the trailer for Mission Impossible Two constructed to attract an audience?

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How is the trailer for Mission Impossible Two constructed to attract an audience?

Film trailers are shown at cinemas before films, they feature films that are about to come out. They are made up of shots from the film and have captions showing release date, major stars and who it’s made by. They are designed for a specific audience, for example their not going to show a trailer for an 18 before a PG film. MI2 is designed for 15 to 30 years old; all the shots are action, full of explosions, fighting and heroism. Their purpose is to persuade people to come and see the film. They can do this in 3 main ways: the trailer can use a major star as the selling point like MI2 does, they can use the story line as the basis for selling the film or they can just use shots from the film. They also show the audience what sort of genre the film is.

The trailer starts with the paramount screen, which tells the audience it’s made by Paramount. The trailer is in 4 sections; the first section shows a camera scanning the Grand Canyon looking for someone, it gives a feel of openness, when it finds him it zooms in like a human eye, which is quite high tech. The camera is attached to a helicopter and flows toward an unknown man climbing the Grand Canyon without ropes, then he slips and catches himself with one hand, and the audience get a glimpse of his face.  This tells the audience that he likes living dangerously and on the wild side. Then it cuts to a shot of a computer locking on to his position, this makes the audience think he is something special, someone needs to find him and they can use very high tech gear to do it. The second section starts with an extreme close up of Tom Cruise hanging off the edge of the Grand Canyon, and then it cuts to him putting on glasses that do a retinal scan to identify him. The camera starts to pan around him while a voice over starts “Good morning Mr Hunt sorry I barged in on the your vacation”. This is where the audience learn that he is a secret agent, after all how many people have glasses that do a retinal scan and have little speakers built in.

Section 3 is a very fast moving section, it is a completely different to the first two sections because it is made up of short clips that are cut very quickly and there are lots of action shots. The first two sections only feature Tom Cruise while the third section features lots of different people, this is because they want the audience to focus on him, he is the selling point of the film. All the shots in the third section have fire and explosions in the background, this is because they are associated with danger and death, all the shots are very short and cut very fast. The audience hear a very authoritative voice over, which tells the audience that its someone with more authority than Ethan, and that its a very dangerous mission, “ If the you should die or be captured the secretary will disavow all knowledge of the your actions”. This followed by Tom Cruise saying, “ You got to be kidding”. Which makes the audiences think that the man who can climb the Grand Canyon without ropes and can fight his way out of anything thinks that it’s impossible, the audience know that it’s going to be a struggle even for Ethan Hunt. There are about 6 very short clips of film, which are all long shots. There are shots of Ethan Hunt racing a fast car against another car with a woman driving, who the audience see later on in bed with him. The audience also see some shots of Ethan Hunt fighting, these scenes are slowed down to emphasis the skill and the pain in the fights. There are also a couple of shots of Ethan Hunt riding a motorbike in to a car and coming out unhurt, which tells the audience that he is capable of death defying actions. The shots of the driving and riding are speeded up to emphasise the danger, whereas the fighting scenes are slowed down to emphasise his skill. The last shot in this sequence shows Ethan Hunt riding out of the flames; almost as if he’s victorious, he’s won. Throughout this section there is a constant background filter in red, which adds to the felling of danger, other special effects include speeding up and slowing down and rewinds of sections.

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There are three captions “A John Woo Film”, “Mission Impossible Two” and “MI2”. The MI2 caption relates it to top-secret government agencies such as MI5, MI6 and the CIA.

Section 4 shows section 1 in reverse, the glasses start off in pieces and then go back together in to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) hands and back on to his face. Then it goes forward again and they fly off and explode. They are mid shots. Then the shot cuts to a screen full of captions about who stars in the film, who it’s made by etc. There is a voice ...

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