Film trailer regulation

Although film trailers are made by putting together scenes from a film, the film trailers are not aloud to include any scenes that show anything that is unsuitable, such as violence. Film trailers are also given an age certificate by the BBFC that sometimes may be different to the film as the trailers are independently regulated. Film trailers are only aloud to be showed to an audience of the appropriate age for that trailer, for example if a trailer is rated as a 15 then the trailer will only be allowed to be shown in a cinema before a film of the same age rating or higher. If the trailer is going to be shown on television then it may have to be edited so that it is suitable, if it is for a film that is above a certain age rating then it must be shown after the watershed.

Production process

The production process of a film trailer will begin with the film production company deciding on which trailer company will produce their trailer, for example Universal Studios may choose a company such as the ant farm.

The trailer will be produced while the film is still being shot, the editors of the trailer will look at various key scenes from the movie that have already been produced and decide which ones to include in the trailer, they will choose scenes that they think will look the most interesting to the audience and intrigue them to watch the film, or the film production companys will tell the trailer companys which scenes to work with. Due to the film not being fully finished some of the scenes in the trailer may not be in the finished film.

The editors will then get to work on producing the trailer, they will begin by planning the trailer and deciding what order to put scenes in, and what effects and sound to use etc. Once they ahve decided on this they will begin to produce the trailer and put the scens together and also add in effects and text such as the release date and the names of the companies involved with the film. For the final part of production they will add the sound and most likley have someone narrating during the film trailer vaguely describing what the film is about, they will nearly always add some sort off music, however this may not be the soundtrack or any music that is in the film because the film makers will not add sound in unitl the last stage of production.

Key companies

There are many companies that produce film trailers, you will often find that the producer that made the film will have not made the trailer because production companies will go to the film trailer companies to make their trailer.

The Ant Farm:

The Ant Farm are one of the main film trailer production companies and are based in Los Angeles, they produce trailers for not only films but for tv programmes and games aswell. they are on of the most well respected film trailer production companiesand have been asked to produce trailers for many big films.

some of the films they have produced trailers for are:

• Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows


• Iron Man 2


• Cowboys And Aliens


• Tranformers: Dark of the moon

They have worked with major film production companies such as Warner Bros, Universal Pictures and Dreamworks which shows that they are a well respected company that can produce good film trailers.

History Of Film Trailers

Film trailers were first seen in 1913, from then up until the 1950's film trailers consisted of the various key scenes from the film it was advertising, there would also be large text describing what was happening in the trailer, however this was not a good way of advertising films as all the main scenes in the film would have been shown in the trailer. Film trailers started to modernise in the 1960's, textless trailers began to appear that were montages of clips from the film, things such as quick editing became popular. Today film trailers are much different and show a few scenes from the film to give the audience an idea of what the film is about without revealing any of the key scenes, also instead of descriptive text being on the screen there is often some narration.