In late January of 2012 a movie was released called "The Grey" Directed and Produced by Joe Carnahan and also Written by Joe Carnahan & Ian Mackenzie Jeffers. It is a story about how six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman (Liam Neeson) to survival after their plane crashes in Alaska, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step.
Lets have a listen to the first 30 seconds and whats one of the first thing you notice, an ominous tone created using a synthesiser. It is modulating its Low pass filter up and down which immediately gives you a sombre feeling as if something has happened or you are deep in thought, this is used in many films to create uneasiness, perhaps a good example of this is many scenes from the 1999 film The Matrix. They use a similar tone to increase tension as part of many key scenes thought the movie. There is also a piano playing a minor scale over the top of this using very minimalist playing, which usually implies that whatever is happening on screen is usually a moment in time (forethought or reflection). In this case refers to a moment within the clip where we get insight to the main characters story where we find out he has lost a person he held close to him, the contrast between the two sounds helps to lay the bed for a story of how this character is struggling with himself and thus enhancing the mood that is carried across of him being a solitary character with a dark past. This ties in heavily with the visually as we open with a scene on an oil field with a phase from Liam saying "A job at the end of the world" enforcing these emotions.
So within the first eight seconds we already have a feel for who this character is, then we get our first taste of what is to follow where you can hear that everything gets slightly quieter. We are introduced with our first glimpse into another key element of the film where we can hear a wolf howling, although at this point you may be unaware of the significance. it is already planting a seed that; okay, this vast nothingness that is Alaska is much more dangerous than just extreme cold and isolation and the slight drop in volume really gravitates your attention towards this element and can add more tension or suspense depending on the contrast between the two. Moments later we encounter our first Riser in tension which is kind of a stutter/glitch effect effect which co-insides alongside with a white flash. Now with most modern films these days this usually means there will be a dream scene or flashback which is further embellished where the piano which has been playing single notes up until this point plays an octave lower than itself building more drama into the scene.
Up until this point, the sound design has been pretty tame in terms of dynamics and the dialogue has been in first person to help establish the story. The next ten seconds is where the action begins a we get a glimpse into how cinematic trailers, (because they are short format pieces) are used as more of a marketing tool to capture the interest of those watching it by using extreme dynamic range. We cut to a scene where Liam is boarding a plane and we start realising more of the extreme situations that start to play out where there is a flight crew cleaning ice off the plane before take off. We hear a cello fading in with the synth that has been playing behind the shots before everything starts going quiet and what sounds like an exhale as if all of the suspense building up to this point seems to have been released. This was done intentionally as the Next event occurs where all of a sudden a large crashing sound envelops the listener. Not only is this one of the loudest parts we have heard so far (in terms of dynamics) we have introduced more frequency content into the upper regions where this has really just been taken up by the dialogue and some parts of the piano. The designers have done some interesting things where they have added the typical sub bass drop to the end of the scene and reintroduced the stutter/glitch effect which in this case could be heard as the plane engines failing or another moment of surrealism as if the charter is thinking that 'This cant be happening'. This trend of extreme dynamic range repeats for each scene change and tension moment for the rest of the clip so perhaps the next thing to listen to is the Music and Effects tracks (also called M&E tracks).
In the picture above you can see the range of loudness between each key sequence. When you're trying to mix things like dialogue, music and your effects around this a lot of things can go missing very quickly, so the designers have introduced elements for each scene such as when we see the wreckage there is a howl of wind, when we see the wolves the sounds start as really distant with loads of reverb and as we finally se them the low end frequencies from the first few scenes come back in to start enticing more suspense as the trailer progresses and reintroducing familiar elements to tie everything together speaking of tying things together. Did you hear another riser just before the rope snapped? They created so much tension with the M and E track that not even the rope could support it.
Speaking of music and effects. Did you hear how drastically the music attenuated when there was dialogue? Not only is this a tool to keep the dialogue seperate to everything you are listening to, but it is adding more drama to the scene and making the consumer feel more and more uneasy by having such drastic changes; while also progressively adding more instrumentation to the score, things like strings and drums really build for the climax, and unless it is using the audio directly from the scene where particularly when he breaks the bottles over the stone in the last scenes, each aspect are greatly exaggerated, yet again adding to the consumer experience and heightening the overall feel for the trailer. the same principals of the sound design in this trailer carry out through each time a title card is flashed on screen or there are key moments where all of these processes are used to keep the viewer actively engaged with the product which is as stated earlier just a promotional piece for the film and is used to capture the attention and raise interest to those watching it. thats not without saying that it is generally loud overall, but the dramatic difference between the quietest and loudest points is exaggerated and for films of a similar genre these are noticed.
So what can we learn from analysing film trailers is that they generally follow a very distinct formula of how the sound design is incorporated into the final product. You may not need actually assets from the media you are promoting but setting the tone and mood and then building towards a climax within such a short amount of time without over cluttering the general mix and keeping that dialogue as the focal point.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1601913/?ref_=ttexst_exst_tt
http://thecinematheque.ca/education/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/LanguageofFilm07.pdf
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2013/11/29/hitchcock-lessing-and-the-bomb-under-the-table/ https://www.asoundeffect.com/modern-trailer-sound/