Zodiac Film trailer analysis

Film trailer

Zodiac

Use of voice overs

in the film trailer there is a voice overlaid, of the detective, at the beginning of the trailer. the voice overlaid occurs over the footage to help to tell the story to the viewer, this means it can draw the audience in and then they will want to watch the film. This is done throughout the trailer so that the audience is always engaged. Various clips are selected from the film which have the characters talking and then it goes to jump cuts of specific things that have been mentioned for example when a character is talking about finger prints it goes to a picture of finger prints this is called asynchronous  dialog, another example is  the antagonist has written a puzzle to them in greek morse code or cryptic messages and one of the characters reads out one of the puzzles and it says that ' i like killing people because man is the most dangerous animal of all' with that occurring it helps explain the narrative.

Camera Shots

The camera shot types that were successfully used by Fincher made it easier to identify the genre of the trailer towards the audience this was done by using shot types like close ups and point of view shots. For example when the case of the murder was introduced to the audience this was the scene when a puzzle was given to the main character it showed a close up of the puzzle and then the rest of the information was also captured. This was all done deliberately by Fincher because meant that the audience had the responsibility to try and solve that puzzle with the actors in the thriller.  This alerts a feeling of reassurance within the audience that confirms that they are watching a thriller genre trailer.

Mise En Scene

The mise en scene in the Zodiac Trailer definitely worked well when conforming to the conventions. The lighting was dark and gloomy which set up the scene and made it clear that the events going to take place in this film were not light and jolly, but dark and depressing and it also meant it wasting to be mysterious because with these types of lighting it plays a earey feeling and thrillers are mysterious so the lighting had to be dark and dull to drawn in the target audience. The pathetic fallacy would make the audience get into the mood that this trailer is trying to create. While it isn’t a very light one. that they are trying to foresee. For example a dark sky, would symbolise a bad event about to take place, as it is covering the city and this suggests to the audience that the event is going to have an underlying effect on the rest of the city as the tragic events will be on the news and will occupy the police of the city. Therefore it is clear that the weather has a direct affect on the mood of the characters in the trailer/ film.