Western Trailer Conventions

In western film trailers, there are a few primary cliches. A standoff between sherrif and villain will occur, six bullets will be fired, even though revolvers can only fire 5 at a time. The setting with romantic, sweeping frontier landscapes or rugged rural terrain will be shown. The cowboy has a favored horse (or 'faithful steed') that he will be seen caring for at various points of the trailer. he also does a lot of riding on the aforementioned horse, no doubt to save someone tied up on train tracks in spagetti westerns. For example, Roy Rogers' Trigger, Gene Autry's Champion, William Boyd's (Hopalong Cassidy).  Westerns may extend back to the time of America's colonial period or forward to the mid-20th century, or as far geographically as Mexico. The lone, cynical cowboy who is trying to be honorable amidst a dishonorable environment. Usually he is lonely because he is a widower, or he was wronged.
A strong woman who is the voice of reason, (and probably the love interest) for the "hero."

Horror Trailer Conventions/ The Ring Task

The Ring is a prime example of how to use the horror conventions to make a successfully chilling trailer. One of the most obvious examples of the conventions being used is the creepy little girl as the antagonist. This is a trait that is shared with many other films such as The Omen and The Excorcist. For some reason children are scary and often look unkept if they are to star in a horror film. Phone calls illustrate that this is a film that follows the cliche's. Phone calls where bad news when the ominous "The call is coming from inside the house" was in When a Stranger Calls, and ever since a phone call can come from any source, no matter how unlikely it seems. A short trip to the local nuthouse seems to provide some insight as to what is happening, for asylums are full of victims of ghosts, ghouls and undead serial killers.

Fantasy/ Epic Conventions

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a classic fantasy epic that displays many conventions ascociated with the genre. Conventions such as a grand battle, which was preluded by several samll battles, the concept of "Sword and Sorcery", and a range of near human protagonists and antagonists. In fantasy films there will always be a dark menace that needs to be stopped less there be darkness ruling the world. At the films primary battle scene which is viewed in snippets in the trailer, the good guys will be losing the majority of the time, until the very last few moments when an unusual amount of reinforcements arrive extremely quickly. There will be characters so powerful they gain time to say a quote before cutting to several fast shots of the aforementioned battle.

Romantic Comedy Trailer Conventions

The conventions of Romantic comedy trailers are very numerous. This includes the light hearted music as verious people smile at each other or the camera, the comic relief will wisecrack at one point. There is usually an awkward stare followed by another smile. A doubting mother will moan, and a father will say "go for it" in hushed tones. The rom-com trailer is home to all these and more cliches than you can shake an emotionally detached stick at. Even the intertitles will have these cliches, as they appear on screen with the actors leaning on their arms and smiling once again.
The trailer above shows many conventions that are ascociated with the genre including the awkward encounter with an attractive girl (in this case penelope cruz). There is a light hearted tune in the course of the trailer, with many other funny encounters, including a confrontation with a romantic/ trust issue, what is usually found in such a situation, only to be interrupted by "the funny guy". There is high key lighting to represent the lightened mood in a comedy such as this.

I have been using the new premier elements 10 at school, with this it has become much easier to develop and change the future project as I see fit. Instructions are as follow...

1. When on Premier Elements 10 go to change settings.
2. PAL
3. HDV
4. HDV 720p 25
5. Save to My Videos
6. Get media from the Get Media option, choose destination
7. Save by sharing, computer, FLV web large PAL source (Flash 8 and Higher)

Remember to switch between time ine and sceneline for best results.

Action Adventure Trailer Conventions

The conventions of action trailers are very similar to the actual conventions of the film... obviously. There are always action scenes, whether they turn up in the form of a fist fight, explosions, or an all out gun fight. This leads to the audince wondering why are they fighting, whilst also being in awe of the fights that are taking place. This usually means that special effects are also a mainstay of the trailer as well as the film, which can be easily assumed.

The tranformers 3 trailer is an excellent example of displaying an unsually large amount of explosions and fight scenes for a two and a half minute trailer.

Another convention is that there must always be an easily identified hero in the trailer. This may take the role of a retired cop who has to recue his family, or any number of "The Chosen One" charcters from multiple film e.g. Ash Ketchum, Shia la Beuf's character or Harry Potter. And of course  for it to be an action film trailer there needs to be a villain in direct competition with said here, to follow the conventions of good verses evil, and the desiceve fight at the climax of the trailer/ film, e.g. Bane, Dr Elsa Shneider and Roy Batty. ( the latter two are from Indiana Jones and Blade runner respectively)
In The Expendables The group of mismatch old fogies team up to deal with a seemingly impossible mission, and all the odds stacked against them. This is also a convention in many other action films.

Dead Snow

This film poster is of the film Dead Snow, a horror film starring nazi zombies. As you can see the focus of the poster here is that of a decapitated nazi officer. This obviously shows that the film follows the splatter horror sterotypes, as well as following the zombie movie cliches. The chainsaw is a particularly good example of how a weapon can be cliche, as in many horror films, the chainsaw is the "ultimate zombie killing weapon". Other features of the poster include the other zombies that you can see in the background, suggesting that the film will be full of the horde, and things may go quickly out of hand. The poster is clearly trying to appeal to your typical zombie film officianado and horror fan, as well as trying to appeal to those people which also like horror comedies, as proven by the review at the top which states "there is a storm of scary fun to be had in this splatterfest" The poster also shows the location of the film, which coincides with the film title itself. It's clearly in a cold, snowy area, which is unusual for there to be a zombie film set there. n the background you can see a cabin. Another mainstaw of the film could be that this is where the survivers will spend most of their time in safety, before the obvious fnal fight at the end of the film. Therefore it follows many of the horror film conventions and cliche's, minus the setting.