genre analysis

Genre Analysis 

The film Saving Private Ryan is part of the war genre. You can obviously tell by the trailer that the genre is war. The start of the trailer shows a slide show of war related images and then a voice over of a letter being read out loud which indicated this voice over is featured in the actual film.

In this trailer they use a range of different camera types. They use a long shot so you can get the whole view of the character but still get the detail of the background in. They also use close ups through the whole film. They use close ups to show the importance of things and expressions on the characters faces, the characters in this film are soldiers so they see traumatic things so using a close up camera shot will show how they feel.
The trailer features an American flag which connotes that the film is going to be patriotic as it is the one of the thing we see. A few seconds later we find out its about Soldiers fighting in the war which suggest that is American soldiers at war. We know that this film is set on the beaches of Normandy. This is a common setting for war film as it is familiar to many people, also this tells us it was based around World War II because the beaches of Normandy were raided during the War. The uniform the soldiers have on is obviously military uniform, each of the costumes were different as each characters uniform had different rankings on, also some costumes has bullet holes and rips in to make the scene look realistic and the helmets were dented. This was so the scene looked realistic and authentic.
There were a lot of various props used throughout the trailer. The props give the film that extra detail and make it seem real. All the soldiers in the trailer had guns, the guns had to have an accurate representation of what the guns were like back in World War II. The soldiers each had different guns, E.G some soldiers had rifles and some had machine guns. Other props which were used were the Czech Hedgehogs, this were used to add some realism and effect to the battlefield.
The lighting throughout the trailer is dark and gloomy, this is done to capture the gritty tones of the film. This is also because of the destruction the smoke and ashes portrays the grey and black tones.

The way the characters act throughout the trailer varied, some of the characters had to make it look like they were in pain from the wounds their characters inflicted. Others acted in shock and horror because of the events around them, there was a lot of screaming and shouting from the soldiers to really capture the emotion of the soldiers.

Towards the end of the trailer, the music becomes incredibly dominant as the heightened 'clash' of the symbols erupts as soon as bomb goes off which is where the still image starts to become moving and shows very quick shots of the three main characters.
With this trailer, we can clearly observe that the most emphasised element is the music and voice over as it builds up to the explosion of the bomb. This could be due to the actual content of the trailer is perhaps too graphic for certain members of the audience. In addition, it may be due to the fact that during wars such as WW1 and WW2, many people listened to the radio for stories and key information so the trailer is giving the audience the idea of what it was like to not have a visual media platform.