Once - trailer review

I had seen this trailer when I went to watch Lincoln with my classmates, and as I recall I remember Gino turning to me and whispering, “Hey… can we watch this?” I looked back and smiled honestly for I too felt the same way. Looking back on it now I wonder what about the trailer made me so anxious to see it? What I’d like to focus on today is why the trailer was so successful in terms of narrative, mis en scene, and cinematography, edit, and sound design.

Focusing on the narrative, the trailer through the use of master shots already establishes the main character and the setting. We see a young woman opening the doors to what seems to be a large and empty house. There are slow hints in the trailer showing the main plot of the story through the voice-overs used in the scenes. For example, the trailer begins with the protagonist providing a back-story by saying “My dad always used to tell me stories… about brave warriors”. The following shots are quick juxtapositions between drawings of creatures and her father narrating the importance of the beings. The narrative structure then breaks the voice over / omnipresent P.O.V and takes a turn for a narrative structure entailing chronological sequences in the film. In other words, quick shots of the story begin to be revealed and the protagonist’s interaction with the other characters.

            There are a few perks of creating an animated film and that’s usually not spending time and effort to shoot at locations, create props, and designing sets. In most animated films many directors and their crew will scout locations and take photos before recreating these photos in the animation.  The Mis En Scene in the film can be described as hidden, magical, large overhanging trees and nature. The setting of the film takes place in a forest where in it dwells mystical creatures sworn to protect it at all costs. What’s very interesting about this film is that in a majority of the story the characters are smaller then a couple inches. This means the location deals with large plants, humongous flowers, rats the size of cars, and essentially everything considered tiny is now twice as big. It further proves how the film is science fiction, and it will hopefully captivate the audience with its radiant imagery.

            Furthermore, the cinematography depicted in the short 1-minute trailer consisted of action shots and ranged from Long shots to Extreme Close-ups. As mentioned before action shots are the best medium for capturing the audience’s attention. For example we see scenes with characters running away from large creatures and battle sequences between two talents. These shots are often shot at eye-level and are wide shots. However, the trailer also encompasses proper framing when it comes to conversations and actions between two people. Despite this being an animated film, the animators keep in mind headroom, proper lighting sources, and in most cases mantain the 180-degree line.

            As for all trailers most of its success comes in the form of it’s editing. The editing mantains the chronological events of the story so that viewers do not get confused in the progression of events. These shots as well are not longer than 3-5 seconds, which is average of basic Hollywood-films in order to maintain the attention span of the viewers. The scenes were cut fast, considering most of them were action shots, and so that the entire story would not be given away. The scenes also go well with the voice over that accompanies the shots and the editor creates text in-between shots to create an amount of suspense and intrigue in the trailer. 

            Finally sound design was well done. There were separate background songs depending on the mood of the sequence, and these music choices were catchy and popular in the music industry. The sound would also crescendo during climatic parts in the trailer: man pulling out sword and fighting giant army, music gets louder, swords clanking and people screaming, music at loudest point before cutting to a black screen at a very intense part in the shot. Also there would be scenes without any music such as the shot where the people encounter the protagonist and you can only hear the dialogue.  I’m not entirely sure if voice-overs count as sound design but the editor properly used dialogue from the story and 3^rd person dialogue to create a strong emotional trailer. I look forward to watching this some day because I am quite a sucker for animated films.