The preview for the movie World Trade Center begins with images of normal everyday life, showing the city as a whole, and brief glimpses into the lives of everyday people. The lighting is generally bright and clear, with bright sunny skys, nothing overly ominous. It shows a average morning in new York City, conveying the sense of the unexpectedness of the attacks.
This normal morning comes to a end a third of the way through the preview, a police officer turns around to the site of a low flying plane, people look up from their desks in a office in the WTC. From this point on the preview becomes more focused on individuals, with close ups of certain people dominating the rest of the preview, leading us into the story of two survivors of the attack. The final scene of the preview pans out from the men caught in the rubble to an overhead view of New York which contrasts the story of the individuals with the enormous scale of the disaster. The preview as a whole is meant to personify the events of that day that most of us still remember clearly, the fact that the movie is based on such a memorable true event makes it strong appeal to viewers emotions.
The preview for the movie Shoot ‘Em Up plays to a completely different audience than WTC, while the WTC movie is intended to play to the audiences emotions and memory, this movie largely just plays to audiences desire for entertainment. The preview largely focuses on close ups of the three central characters in the story. The lighting is generally dark throughout the movie, with the scenes being shot either outdoors on overcast days or in dark rooms. Occasionally the screen freezes and the image becomes a posterized red and white or red and black image, with captions to highlight the basic premise of the plot, which seems to be rather simple and not the primary reason someone would go to watch this film. These freeze frames add to the imagery of graphic violence which seems to be the sole purpose of this film. After introducing the plot and characters the preview just goes into random scenes of the movie, most likely the best parts, unlike the 911 movie the preview for shoot em up does not follow much of a plot, much as the movie probably does not either.
WTC and Shoot ‘Em Up are two highly different movies and comparing their previews show that. WTC is meant to appeal to people’s emotion and memories of a true event, while the Shoot ‘Em Up trailer just shows a glimpse of what looks to be a entertaining movie to try to get people to watch it.
Nikos Kavoori
By coincidence, I previewed the same two trailers. I agree with the fact that WTC is appealing to audience’s emotions through the tragic event. The analysis you made about the size of the survivors compared to the size of the event gave me a new look on the movie. Focusing on only a couple people to see how the event affected the average person does add a new spin on the movie. I do disagree with what you said about Shoot Em Up. I believe that there is a plot in both movies (maybe not a very good plot in the second, but a plot nonetheless) and that the movie appeals to the emotions of the audience, but in a different way. Shoot Em Up appeals to excitement and action rather than sadness like in WTC. I think we have had the general analysis on both trailers so no doubt I agree with a majority of your points.
ReplyDelete