Film Anaylsis The Departed

This is the trailer for the film, 'The Departed.' From my previous analysis of 'The American Gangster' i got the same feel for this one as they both portray, good and evil. The good character being played by Leonardo and Damon and then the bad characted played by Nicholson.

Already anaylising gangster trailers i have understood that within our group, our final outcome of our trailer needs a good character and a bad character to bring across the effect of a good gangster film.

As the trailer starts we straight away see Nicholson, as well as the narator speaking throughout the trailer bringing a sense to the audience that he is the main, higher status character towards leonardo and damon, having more power, making the other two characters look more innocent and less of the bad guys.

As it starts and continues with Nicholson narration stating question towards the audience, brining them involved within the film, grabbing the thoughts of the audience to linger onwards to figure out the answers.This can bring the audience more inducued within a trailer which we want to indicate to our audience, as they get to know our characters within our trailer.

There is cross cuttings within the trailer to bad and good. From Nicholson to Damon, Nicholson to Leonardo. I also found that the bad character influencing the good, to make them into gangsters.This could as help us to think of another lead to our trailers storyline, maybe to mix it up a bit to get viewers more interested or it could possibly just make viewers bored. Maybe a group discussion on this will help bring our storyline, storyboard together in a different approach to the usual gangster image.

As the trailer plays we find out that here is a gangster film. Showing iconic symbols of Police men, Guns, Knifes, Fighting, all of which we need to consider within our own trailer to sysmbolise this genre into our filming. Yet again from my previous analysis of trailers iconic objects can help produce our genre. Thinking as a group we could all discuss on what objects could be good to use, maybe a gun, money, drugs... etc... The main images, icons that our audience will straight away view and think that they can pick up our genre and be interested as an audience.

- Karis Hammond