500 Days of Summer - Teaser trailer analysis

You can follow the link below to the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILCB_f0IIyI

'500 Days of Summer' is a film of an entirely different genre to those that i have analysed so far, and as a result it has entirely different features. It last of near enough 1 and a half minutes.

• The first thing to notice with the film is the voice over man. This is something that you will always find with films of the romantic comedy genre and it quickly translates the genre to the audience because of this.
• Also the lighting is far brighter in this trailer, especially when compared to a trailer like that of the expendables. This is largely down to the portrayal of the genre. If a rom com was filmed entirely in dark light then it would appear strange and so to fit into the genre stereotype, the trailer is filmed in summery, bright conditions. We can see this is these screen shots.

• The main two characters are identified in the trailer at the beginning. The camera slowly zooms out on the male and the pans across to slowly zoom in on the girl. 

This straight away shows a connection between the two, whilst also identifying them as important characters that the audience should concentrate on.

• Another classic feature of a romantic comedy that is used in the trailer is that of time passing quickly being shown by the a fast forward effect on a person and then of day passing to night. Both of this are used one after the other in order to show that time has moved on during the trailer, most other film genres (like action) just use a fade to black to show the same thing. We can see the time passing effect below in the following screen shots.

• The cutting is such that both the male and female have equal screen time, and also it alternatively switches between the two. Not only does this show them as equally important, but it reinforces the connection between them that was established at the start of the trailer.

Also every now and again we will see a shot of the two characters together to reinforce their relationship further.

• At one point in the trailer there is a shot in which the focus is shifted in order to see a lamp in focus. The camera has a thin depth of focus which is moved. It moves to focus on a light, which could symbolise hope within the movie.