Differences between film trailers and film openings

Differences between film trailers and film openings

Film trailers contain snippets of the film with many cuts and fades to black to show off the film and entice people to watch the film. Film opening must establish themes and settings for the film while showing some titles or credits.

Titles

Usually appear at the end of a trailer whereas throughout a film opening. With most film openings the titles are shown in a particular order starting with production companies and ending with the director. It will usually show the star cast as their characters appear on screen to help establish the narrative and characters.

Content

Trailers contain cut sections from the film with a lot of fades to black. This allows the audience a taster of what they are expecting to see if they were to watch the film and hopefully entice them into doing so. Trailers will show some of the best bits without spoiling the film too much. It will often establish some of the main storyline and characters but in less detail than a film opening. Some non-diagetic music will often be played intermittently, usually multiple different tracks from the film, during a trailer to show off some of the themes and genre as well as allowing for some scenes with speech to be fit in without music.

A film opening should establish setting, characters and include hints towards the narrative of the film but show nothing too obvious. It may throw you straight into a more exciting scene but nothing climactic will be shown in an opening of a film for the most part. Sets a pace for the film so things don’t escalate too quickly. Some non-diagetic music will often be played over the top of the opening titles to help establish a tone for the film.

Edit

Trailers will almost always be fast paced , switching from scene to scene, and contain a lot of fades to black which can create more mystery and make it difficult to understand certain things from it. Openings can be slow or fast paced depending on the content/ genre of the film.

An example here is the Mission Impossible Rogue Nation Trailer...

Here is an example of the Rogue Nation opening titles...