Analysis of a Teaser Trailer- Kidulthood

In order to better understand how to create and recognize teaser trailers, I am going to analyse this one, a trailer for the 2006 film Kidulthood, because it is in a similar vein and aimed at a similar audience to our proposed first idea.



Firstly, the length of this trailer is 1 minute- compared to the length of the theatrical trailer for the same film, which is 2 minutes 46 seconds long. The teaser also obeys the convention of not giving away any major plot points- nothing in the trailer is mentioned of the young girl's suicide, which is the catalyst for all the movie's events, and only gives the merest hint of the strong theme of gun crime in the film, with a quick flash of a gun at 0.43. However, it manages to give the audience a strong flavour of what the movie is about, and who it is aimed at.

This teaser trailer does not feature any original material, but this is likely because the film was relatively low budget and the makers could not afford to film extra material. A voiceover is used, however, which enables the trailer to include dialogue, but not any of the lines from the movie, enabling the trailer to give a summary of events without, again, revealing important plot points.

The teaser was released in late 2005, with the film being released in March 2006. This breaks the convention of teasers being released long in advance of the actual movie, but again, this may be due to the movie's budget constraints (only £600,000 was allocated to the film.) Anothe possible reason could be that as the film is aimed primarily at teens, it was released later so as to keep the film fresh in their minds.

Overall, the Kidulthood teaser is in keeping with the structural traditions of a teaser trailer- it was simply released later than most.

This teaser is going to be influential for us, as our film has similar themes and will include similar violent imagery and bleak landscapes. However, we intend to use music instead of a voiceover, as we feel it will be more effective for our action-driven plot and will better represent the pace of the film.