Research: Primary (Star Wars Analysis)

Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace
Teaser Trailer


From the opening sequence of the teaser trailer the audience is immediately drawn to it because of the use of non-diegetic sound. The music immediately used is mysterious and enthralling to grab the audiences attention and excite them for the clip that they are about to see. The non-diegetic sound used is the key aspect of this teaser trailer throughout the clip as the music gradually increases to a more up tempo beat, which is now known to people as the Star Wars theme. Other sound techniques used include small diegetic clips of actual film footage, which incites the audience to make them want to find out more about the story, which they could only do by watching the film.
As the teaser trailer progresses the pace of the editing increases. At the beginning of the teaser trailer the cutting rate is approximately five seconds and by the end of the teaser trailer it has increased to one second. This builds up a sense of excitement and action as the events are changing quickly.
A lot of emotion is being portrayed in the screen shots used in the teaser trailer. As well as showing a lot of emotion there are a variety of different camera angles used, such as mid shot, over the shoulder shot, high angle, low angle, establishing shot and panning. This creates a sense of interest as the audience have to pay attention in order to take in all of the short clips. Also as the trailer is not using the same type of shot over and over again it is not boring to see.
The mise-en-scene in the trailer (from the film) uses period costumes mixed with futuristic technologies. Combining the two would leave the audience feeling intrigued as to the purpose of this and leaving them wanting to view more to discover the purpose.
During the teaser trailer the narrative is introduced by a screen of text that reads: “Every generation has a legend…” which is then followed by an establishing shot of the location, followed by another screen of text reading: “Every journey has a first step…” The usage of the text allows the audience to feel involved as they are not being spoken to; they actually have to read it for themselves. The establishing shot helps to set the scene of where the film is set. There is then a shot of an old looking village but with small spacecraft-type objects. This will create a sense of interest as the audience want to know how and why the two separate time zones (olden style and futuristic) are placed together. A third screen of text is then shown, reading: “Every saga has a beginning…” After this several characters and events are then introduced, still with the non-diegetic music. Then as the non-diegetic music fades slightly speech between characters is introduced where the characters and the plot are hinted at. The character of Anakin Skywalker is shown and concentrated on throughout the small clips. The diegetic speech then comes to an end, while the diegetic sounds remain and the non-diegetic music increases in volume.
The teaser trailer builds tension and leaves you wanting more because in the clip where diegetic speech of various characters can be seen they all mention the young boy, or Anakin Skywalker. The characters say how this boy is important and needed. This draws the attention of the audience as it leaves them guessing the reason why a young boy is so important to all of the adults and robots.
The teaser trailer ends with a series of clips showing a battle, before an explosion. This creates a sense of suspense as the audience are left unknowing what happens to the characters and who the explosion involves and whether they are good characters or bad and why there is even a battle to begin with.


Magazine

The image used in this magazine front cover is a mid-three-person-shot. Post-production work would have been carried out on the photograph as the background of space has been added in behind the photograph. Another noticeable post-production affect added to the image is the glowing light of the actor’s lightsabers.
The magazines main title is behind the image and the sub-title is in front of it. The writing underneath the sub-title informs the audience about what is going to be inside the magazine relating to the sub-title and the photograph.
The main title of the magazine reads: ‘TIME’. The font appears to be ‘Times New Roman’, which would most likely have been the same font throughout the magazine’s publishing. The red colouring of the title matches the issues border and the bullet points of the writing under the sub-title. The title is quite large and has no angle to the lettering or the placing of the title. The sub-title has been written in a different font and colour. As the sub-title reads: ‘Star Wars’ having it written in a different font and a different colour this helps it to stand out and grab the audiences attention. The sub-title text is of a smaller size to the main title, which would be so that the main title is first seen so that you know what magazine you are purchasing and then you see the sub-title, so you know what is going to be inside the magazine. The placing of the sub-title text is towards the bottom third of the page and is aligned in the centre.
There is a colour scheme present on the magazine front cover. This is red. The colour red is not overly used as it is only present in the border, main title, bullet points and film name. This keeps the magazine cover plain and simple. This would attract an older audience as the cover is plain and simple with no added graphics such as coloured boxes or shapes.


Poster

The poster introduces the characters that are going to be in the film by showing eight of the main characters from the film. They would have been chosen so that the audience already recognises characters before going to watch the film.
A tag line is present in the poster, which is situated at the top of the page that reads: “Every saga has a beginning,” this is a line taken from the teaser trailer, which shows a link between the teaser trailer and poster. This would also get the attention of the audience if they had already viewed the teaser trailer or the other way around.
The poster is composed of text and images. There is text place above the images, which is the tag line as well as text placed over the bottom of the image stating the film and credits. The eye is drawn to immediately to the centre of the image as there is a bright light. This then draws the eyes to the images of the different characters before the text. The black border also helps to draw the audience’s attention to the colourful images in the centre of the frame. The purpose of the poster is to advertise the film. It is to attract people’s attention to make them watch to watch the film.

Representation

The characters in this teaser trailer, magazine and poster are mainly male. These characters are represented very stereotypically as being in control. This gives the male the dominant role as there as very few female characters. In the teaser trailer there were a few female characters, but they were not in control of any of the situations, whereas the male characters were. The magazine front cover shows three of the main characters all of whom are male. Two of the characters have lightsabers/swords which shows a sense of power (like men and swords in Medieval times). On the poster are a variety of characters although only one was female. Some of the male character's eyes are focused forwards to grab the attention of the audience, but the female character is looking away.

Collective Identity

As this film is American, American people are shown to be old fashioned in the dress sense but with modern technologies such as the space crafts in the teaser trailer and the lightsabers on the magazine front cover. They are seen as action fighters.

Audience

Rating: PG in America, U in United Kingdom

Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Rated: 6.4/10 by 186,105 votes

Overall
From looking at both the main text (the teaser trailer) and the ancillary text (the magazine front cover and the poster) I am able to see that they work successfully as three products together. The common link between the three is characters and location. The teaser trailer introduces the audience to the main characters by using actual film footage; this is then used when creating the magazine cover and poster as the magazine uses three of the main characters in costume and the poster shows seven of the characters by using images from the film.