The Purpose Of A Trailer

I have looked into why media texts use trailers and what they achieve by doing so and I have found a number of different things out about them.

Soap Opera's, Films and other media texts all use trailers in order to:

• Attract people to watch or use the text - especially their target audiences and even attract new people to use them as well.
• It shows the audience the dates and times of which it is on or when it is released, this means that the audience know all the information they need and are then able to use or watch the media texts.
• To engage all the viewers with the new story lines as well as current ones.
• To encourage the viewers to watch that particular episode.
• To give a preview of what is going to happen in the text.
• Overall to advertise the soap.

Soap trailers are on when the soaps target audience is most likely to be watching, most women are likely to watch the soaps and normally watch them around dinner time or in the early evening. This means that it is best to show the trailers that are for particular episodes in a soap in the adverts of the soap itself, that way you know that the audience that watches the soap are going to see the trailer for that storyline.









The trailer has to have an open narrative otherwise it will give away too much about the story lines, characters and the soap which means that the audience don't even have to watch the soap to find out the endings to things or any other information. A lot of soap opera trailers use cliff hangers so that the audience see the start of something but they need to watch the soap to find out the ending, the audience are normally introduced to a number of characters in the trailer so that they know who is going to be involved in the storyline. By doing all of this the audience are drawn into the soap and then the soap gets more viewings when it is shown on TV.

By doing this research I will know how to set the trailer out when editing it and the content that it will have to include. Although my trailer won't actually be shown on the TV I know that it has to be shown a particular way to draw the audiences attention and get my target audience to watch it. I also know that most soaps are shown before the watershed so the soap itself as well as the trailer has to be suitable for all age groups that may be watching the TV at the time the trailer would be shown.