Film Trailer Review: Life of Pi

The movie Life of Pi directed by Ang Lee, came out on the 21st of November. The buzz that this movie has started to stir up is from its trailer. In this review, I will talk about the aspects of the trailer that make it quite successful.

Figure 1

The narrative structure of the actual film is easily depicted by the selected scenes that were incorporated in the trailer. The trailer consisted of only significant scenes in a chronological order to clearly show the story line. The first scene shown in the trailer does a really good job of establishing the story line for this film. The shots are from the first scene with the ship that the animals are being transported on. Figure 1 above established the scene with the animals on the boat. This scene is significant because it is shows the main conflict that Pi faces throughout the movie. The following scenes show other conflicts and resolutions of the movie, without giving the actual movie away. Also, the trailer does not show the climax but rising actions that make the audience want to further know about the movie and climax of the plot.

Figure 2

The cinematography in this film was really done well. Each shot really exemplified a purpose and the editing in post production really completed the film. I really liked the shots when Pi wakes up on floating debris and realizes that he is stranded in the middle of the ocean. The way that the sky reflects off of the blemish free water really has a cool effect. Figure 3 below is a screenshot of one of the shots in the scene. The general look of the film did suite the story line quite well. The main character, Pi, is a young man from India. Through wardrobe and appearance, the audience can tell the time frame really good for this movie just from the trailer. What I really liked about this film is that over time, Pi's hair got noticeably longer due to being stranded and distraught. Also, from what is in the trailer, the relationship between Pi and the tiger is shown to be progressively growing closer throughout the whole two minutes. One of my favorite scenes in the trailer is the one where the water is glowing green around the boat and then all of a sudden a whale jumps out of the water and over the boat. Figure 2 above is a screenshot from the scene.

Figure 3

Figure 4

This film was completed majority through its edit in post production. This film took place in the middle of the ocean with a lot of dream like and imaginary stuff happening. Definitely a lot of time had to be put into the editing process of this film. For example, the beginning scene of the trailer has Pi swimming through the flooded ship and there is a zebra that swims by the camera. They most likely did not really try to drowned a zebra for this scene, so they definitely created the shot in the edit. In figure 4 to the left, you can see the shot of the zebra swimming underwater. The edit of the trailer pretty generic. It was the type of trailer with out dialogue, a dramatic song and used text to show rising action and explanation for each scene. The movie is an action drama and I think the trailer song fit it well. The song consisted of orchestra instruments that gave a dramatic and fast paced tone for the trailer. Because of the music being fast paced, the cuts from shot to shot are really quick. At some points, the music slows down and shots are held on screen much longer and at a slower speed.

Overall, I feel that this trailer was well done and followed the standard conventions of trailers good.
Heres the link to the trailer: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox/lifeofpi/