RESEARCH AND PLANNING - The Flintstones Teaser Trailer Analysis

The Flintstones teaser trailer is very good in the way in which it doesn’t give away any of the plot of the film.

It starts with the Universal Studios picture of the world showing who has produced this film. A fade to black and the trailer starts. There is a picture of a close up of the moon, with a shadow covering it slowly moving away allowing the audience to see it clearly. Suddenly a big, orange boulder breaks through it flying towards the camera, as though it is aiming for the audience watching this teaser trailer.

It then cuts to a simple black screen, with the main theme tune from the television series playing. This creates nostalgia for the audience as they may recognise this theme tune and it may encourage them to go watch this film in the cinema.

As the lyrics from the song appear onscreen, a small boulder highlights the words being sung. This enables the audience to sing along as well in time. The font in which the lyrics are represented in reflect the stone age time as they are in the stone type font. This is very iconic as the film is set in the Stone Age. It has tried to create a comic affect, as the ‘Y’ in the word family, bounces down with the boulder and as it pings up again it acts as a sling shot to push the boulder onto the next line. The word ‘history’, as it gets bounced on by this boulder; it then gets shatter lines in it. The‘t’ from street falls over. At 0.37 the boulder bounces to and forth changing the words to create a ping pong feeling.

As the lyrics end the boulder bounder off the black screen into the hands of Fred Flintstone who catches it in reality. He then yells his famous line “Yabba, dabba doo!” With a great big smile on his face, looking directly at the camera, addressing the audience.

It then says ‘a comedy for all ages’. This means that the film is aiming at a wide market for kids and adults to enjoy the humour of this light hearted film. The font then changes colour into blue as the title of the film appears on screen. This differentiates it from the rest of the film and makes it stand out. The date appears on screen and in small says ‘Summer 1994’ then ad fades in after to ‘ad’ a comic effect.’

Here is the Youtube link for the teaser trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8KInur6lww

Nikki Stock