Research: Primary (War of the Worlds Analysis)

War of the Worlds
Teaser Trailer

The audiences are immediately dawn to the teaser trailer by the voice over. This is because it talks about in the twenty-first and earth being watch. Most people are interested in whether there is life on other planets and whether we are being watched.
The use of the sound in this teaser trailer is a key aspect. There is a non-diegetic voiceover which talks to the audience throughout the majority of the trailer. His voice is deep and of a scary nature. There is also non-diegetic music in the background which has an eerie sense to it. The audience are drawn in to the teaser trailer as it creates a sense of suspense.
The editing helps to create a sense of suspense and tension in the teaser trailer. This is done by the use of and irregular cutting rhythm. From the beginning of the teaser trailer a cutting speed of two seconds is used, which towards the end of the trailer increases to seven and fifteen seconds. A use of a variety of cutting speeds help the audience to feel excited and interested in faster cutting clips and take in details and build suspense in slower cutting clips.
The teaser trailer uses mise-en-scene to set the scene of an ordinary place. It uses ordinary locations of busy American streets and buildings as well as housing streets. It uses props of taxis on streets and brief cases that lots of business workers carry to create the natural sense of a working city.
The camera work that is used in this teaser trailer is zoom-in, high angle, establishing shot, fade ins, panning, log shots and a tracking shot containing the credits. The use of different shots helps to interest the audience. Emotion is also picked up on towards the end of the teaser trailer with the slight zoom in of the worried faces of the residence of the area.The teaser trailer leaves you with a sense of suspense because before the ending a screen of text appears saying: “They’re already here”. This will make the audience wonder what is already here and interest them. Therefore the only way to discover what “they” are would be to watch the film.

Magazine

The image on the front cover of the magazine shows a mid shot of the main character (from the shoulders up) looking into the camera. Having the main character on the front of the magazine helps the audience to recognise the film. By using a shot of the person’s face with their eyes looking directly into the camera it creates a sense of being watched and the audience’s eyes are immediately drawn to it. The image fills the whole of the frame with text overlapping it.
The font used in the main title is clear and easy to read. It is the largest piece of text on the page, which is used by the audience to identify with. The colour that the main text uses is red. There is a lot of sub text but the main sub-title gives the title of the film, “War of the Worlds.” This is in white.
The red and white colouring of the text is the basis of the colour scheme. The background of the magazine is very dark, so the brighter whites and reds used for the text shows up brightly. This allows the audience to see it clearly and it makes it easy to read even from a distance.There are two pieces of graphical boxes towards the bottom of the magazine. This is used to advertise another story in the magazine, although it can take the attention away from the main image.

Poster

The main image has been placed in the centre of the poster. The image is of an un-human hand with twisted branches around it, which is holding a globe. The un-human hand would attract the audience’s attention as they would want to know what the hand belonged to. The fact that the hand is holding a globe would also interest people because it appear that an un-human create has control of earth. The main title of the poster is above the image with a tag-line below and the name of the main actor and the producer above.
The image appears to be an animated image of a creature holding the globe. The background of the image has been cut away and the image has been placed onto a black background. The right hand side of the image has been darkened; this has been done so that the creature appears to be holding the real globe and it is day time on the one side of the earth, while it is night time on the other.
The main title is very large and in red so that it stands out against the black background. The credits are situated at the bottom of the poster in a less bright font, so that the attention isn’t taken away from the image.

Representation
No characters are revealed through the teaser trailer or the poster. There is a character on the front cover of the magazine; they are male and seen staring at the audience. This could be seen stereotypically representing males as he looks mean. The hand holding up the world in the poster looks like it belongs to a monster/alien. It is stereotypically represented as scary and vulgar.

Collective Identity

The people in this teaser trailer are shown as interested and scared.

Audience

Rating: PG-13 in America, 12A in United Kingdom

Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Rated: 6.6/10 by 125,117 people

Overall

There is no noticeable link between the teaser trailer, magazine front cover and the poster.