Codes and Conventions of a Teaser Trailer

After looking at Genre, one of the first things we realised we need to do is to discover the codes and conventions of the very thing we'd be creating. We started out by brainstorming our ideas on what we generally saw in a trailer. It was clear we would need to watch some to further this knowledge, so we watched the likes of Batman, as seen here, The Bourne Identity (here), Collateral (here) and more. This led us to creating the following table, which compares the codes and conventions of a teaser trailer to those of a theatrical trailer.

Teaser Trailer	Theatrical Trailer
Trying to get people interested	More information about the film
Leaves an air of mystery	Voiceover is about the film itself
Voiceovers is speech from a part of the film	More clips from the film
Shorter than Theatrical	Usually shown just before the film is released
Usually start with an establishing shot	Give a lot more information
Build up hype	Reviews and major details
The shots are usually much shorter and faster
Create interest
Long lead time
“Coming soon”, “2013” – vague
Can use symbolism
Do not need footage from the film

We will need to continue to consider these codes and conventions in the production of our own teaser trailer to make it the best it can be.

Iconic image from the Batman teaser trailer

"Coming Soon" - vague release dates are well known in teaser trailers