Analysis of the Trailer of The Shawshank Redemption

Analysis of the Trailer of The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is a powerful, moving, meaningful movie which

is all about hope and full of emotion. It’s based on a novel written

by Stephen King. Andy (Tom Robbins) is a banker who is sent to jail

but him being guilty is very questionable; his crime being the murder

of his wife and her lover. However, Andy makes the best of the

situation and awes his fellow criminals by his peculiar and withdrawn

character and soon befriends Red the prison fixer. A trailer is a

series of small clips and its purpose, to entice and hook the audience

and essentially promote the movie. In this essay I will outline the

social context, significant achievements with the genre, how language

is exploited for emotive, persuasive or perceptual effect, technical

features and appeal to the audience, patterns and details of language

and visual and image devices compared to other.

Before the trailer has even begun, there is the logo of Columbia

Pictures so already this is appealing due to it being a well known

brand so one could arguably link that to other well known and good

movies produced by the same company. Additionally the creators have

also used world known actors such as Tom Robbins and Morgan Freeman

which is encouraging because logically the movie must be good if there

are good actors. The order of the scenes are also not in chronological

order so it makes the movie appear more jumpy and impulsive because

its not in a linear sequence so it contradicts the courtroom because

its not orderly which suggests that the prison and courtroom are not

what they appear first off to be. It also makes the ...

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said more then once. Then, the trailer leaves the audience confused

and hooked and eager to know more because after the ‘happy scene’

menacing thunder noises then are heard; and thunder is associated with

danger and the trailer then has almost an edge to it and arguably

leaves the question in your head ‘will hope triumph over everything?’

which leaves you to ponder.

Overall, in general one can conclude that the trailer for the

Shawshank Redemption is captivating because it includes interesting

scenes, a friendly voice over, built up tension created by music,

clever camera shots and meaningfulness in approximately three minutes.

It fits the criteria of a trailer because arguably it persuades the

audience to want to know more by using cliff hangers however without

giving the whole story away.