Blog Post 66 - Stage 3 - Editing and Compiling - Trailer Introduction

Commonly seen American Introduction

Now that I have successfully filmed and edited the original footage that I have decided to use in my promotional video this means that I am now in a position to think about the promotional video as a whole and rest of the different aspects that when brought together will form that of the finished product.

When carrying out different research it was apparent that for the first element that I was going to include was of that of a trailer introduction. Looking back to Blog Post 61 - Promotional Video Research this was not something that I had picked up on and there is a simple explanation for this however. When I was reviewing that of the previously released trailers for the different series' for that of Ashes to Ashes none of them include any trailer introductions as...they're not trailers...! For a series' that is going to be aired on the television there is no need for a trailer however in my case I was designing a DVD Video which was going to be that of a film, and therefore it's very important to take this into consideration as to ensure that a professional-as-possible promotional trailer is produced.

British Trailer Introduction

To ensure that I was fully informed in regards to the introductory element of a promotional video or trailer, I decided to carry out some research. With this in mind after seeing the words of "Motion Picture Association of America, Inc" being used on these trailer introductions I found their website (www.mpaa.org). Reading on their website it was apparent that the MPAA are infact a global organisation that work to protect the film industry around the world. However, at this point in time I was slightly unsure as to use this sort of trailer introduction in my promotional video as I certainly did not have anything to do with America within this production. I think that the majority of film production companies are understandably based in America and therefore this is the most common of introductions that I have seen.

With this in mind I thought back to the first stage of this assignment whereas I was creating the DVD Amaray Case, and I remembered sourcing the 15 age certification graphics from the BBFC - The British Board of Film Classification. Carrying out some further research I was able find (http://kidsforkidsuk.org/1417/bbfc-certification-image-1/) the trailer introduction that the BBFC use, which I personally feel it a sincerely better use of introduction for my video trailer.

I also feel that in this case the British have done a better job than that of the Americans as this introduction is more personalised with their being a space for that of putting the film title into the introduction which can be also done in Premiere.

Introduction and Custom Title

With this in mind decided to go ahead with using this in my promotional video. First thing first was to download and save this already high resolution image to my computer which meant that I would be able to then import this to Premiere. Once imported I could then drag this to the timeline and I decided to have an introduction scene of 2:00 seconds which would leave enough time for it to be adequately seen and be able to be understood by anybody watching the trailer. Once this was in place on the timeline I was able to trim the selection back to 2:00 by clicking on the very right of the "clip" and dragging it so that it snapped to 2:00. Once this was in place I was ready to add a customised Title so that I could add the "Mirror Man" title text to that of the trailer introduction. By navigating to Title -> New Title -> Default Still I was able to customise my title, and it was important to bear a few things in mind. For example, it was important to ensure that that title background was going to be that of transparent with no fill as I wanted the clip below to show through, giving the appearance of the the title already being in place. Once I had a rough idea of where it would be and the title had been dragged onto the timeline, I was then able to fine tune the place where it would be by keeping an eye on the viewing window area. It was also important to ensure that the Title was put into the Video 2 area as to ensure that the Title sat on top of that of the clip and was therefore visible.

All in all I was very pleased that I decided to carry out some further research into the trailer introduction as I think that it is important to ensure that the details for this are correct, and most importantly as this is a British Film then it should have the correct film classification.