Soundtrack research

Inspiring Trailers


Before choosing whether or not I even want a soundtrack to my trailer I thought it would be best to have a look at some trailers within my genre and see what sort of songs, if any they use and what effect it has on the trailer itself.













Seeing as in my planning I focused a lot on Love,Rosie it seems like a good place to start.
In their trailer they use two separate songs to show mirror the events as they unfold throughout the film.It starts off with The 1975's song Chocolate which comes under the genre of Indie Rock, its an upbeat playful track, if this track was a person they would be carefree and bubbly and these traits reflect the relationship between the two main protagonists at the beginning of their lives to their later teenage years (graduation, 18 years old) but when things start to get more serious in their lives and their friendship becomes more complicated Olly Murs' song Right Place, Right Time fades in. Even the song title suites the second half of the trailer as it seems that the two main characters never seem to be in the right place or time for one another. If this song was a person they wouldn't quite be content with their own life, pining over something/someone just out of reach.




P.S I Love You's trailer is different to the others that I've looked at I starts off with a self-produced instrumental and as the trailer reveals more of the storyline it fades in  "Breathe" by Michelle Branch but as an instrumental. The combination of the two gives off an overall glow but at the start when the music fades out it does so quiet suddenly almost to show how the female protagonists life changes. In a way this is sort of the same as Love,Rosie it mirrors the storyline in the soundtrack.






Miss You Already isn't quite in my genre but after watching the trailer I really like the compilation of songs. It starts off with a basic instrumental but is then ( as I newly discovered) followed by not one, but two songs.

1. All American Rejects - There's a place
2. R.E.M - Losing My Religion

When There's a place fades in it fades in at the point in the trailer where the storyline takes a turn for the worse and it adds to the distress and helps the audience emotionally connect with maybe how the characters are feeling too. However, my absolute favourite introduction of a song in any/all of the trailers I've watched has got to be when they introduce Losing My Religion as when its brought in it isn't over the film scene its a part of it. The characters in the trailer are signing along to it in a taxi journey and then It continues along with the rest of the trailer. The song again is well suited as in the last section of the trailer the main character Millie is asking her best friend if she thinks there is a heaven and if they would let her in, which could be seen as losing her religion when faced with something as awful as she is going through.


Titanic is a historical romance as the story is set in 1912 but the film was released in 1997. The soundtrack to the trailer is Southampton by James Horner it is a classical instrumental and in my personal opinion it is beautiful and I think it was used as it fits the time period of the film. A stereotype about classical music is that its old and loved by old people so the producers of the trailer probably used this track to boost the context of the film.




From looking at these five very different trailers and how their soundtracks compliment the scenes i'm still unsure on how many songs I would want to include but I think it's helped me choose what type of song I should include.