'Dear John' Trailer

This trailer is generic of the genre ‘Romantic Comedy’ and there are many aspects that justify this. The trailer begins with the two main characters of this film being introduced and showing how they fall in love. They meet in a stereotypical way in which the man saves the woman’s bag from sinking in the sea. A wide shot is used here to show the risk that the man will have taken to save her bag and this indicates the beginning of their relationship. By showing how the two meet each other at the start, we will know what to expect from this film and this narrative development is important in meeting the audiences’ expectations. This is also generic of the ‘rom-com’ genre. Another generic aspect of this trailer is that the settings for the scenes where they are alone are generally beaches and dates. This is included at the start of the trailer to show the development of their relationship and how it will start as a happy and mutual relationship.

            During the trailer, we are told that the man will return to the military and will therefore be away from the woman for a long period of time. This iconizes long distance relationships and shows the struggle between the two to be aware form each other. We see that as he is fighting for his country, he is also fighting for his relationship and emotions as a binary opposition. This is clear from the montage showing the journey of the man and what the audience may expect to see him go through in his life.  From this trailer, we can see that this is a serious relationship with slow guitar music playing throughout. The chose of music will help the audience to see exactly how the two are feeling in their relationship. This music does build up into pop music and we see that this is very generic of this genre.

            There are a lot of close-ups used in the scenes in which the two characters are alone, showing their emotions and emphasising what they are saying to each other about how they feel. More emphasis is put on the kiss that they shared to show how much this means to bot of them. This is showing that their relationship is growing and this is also generic of the ‘rom-com’ genre. The audience will also see that this film includes recognisable actors such as Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried. These actors have appeared in other big movies and will therefore add to the expectations of the audience, as we know what type performance they are going to display. The film is also based off a best selling novel with again will add reliability to this film. We know that if the novel is best selling, the audience can except a great story from this film and will add to the audiences’ expectations.

            Throughout the trailer, the audience is positioned in the perspective of both the man and the woman. The audience will therefore form a close bond with the characters and will want to see them both be happy. This is justified again with the parallel narrative showing one of them writing the letter and the other reading it at the same time. The voice-over is included with the person reading out what they have written in the letter. We therefore get the see the letter from both perspectives. The trailer has a generic Todorov structure, which begins with the equilibrium that they do not yet know each other and they meet in the disruption to their lives. They quickly fall in love and are happy with their blossoming relationship. However this is disrupted again by the fact that the man must go away. This structure sets the enigma codes up for the audience such as what will happen next, will they hold their relationship together and will something happen that ruins it?