PROJECT

A multimodal text analysis of Avatar first trailer.

A trailer can be considered a specific kind of multimodal text and, at the same time, an already established genre.

Texts are meaning-making events whose functions are defined by their use in particular social contexts. (Halliday)

Videos are both multimodal and dynamic texts: as they unfold in time, they display different and constantly varying constellations of sound, image, gesture, text and language. (Baldry and Thibault)

Finally, video texts are organised on a number of different scalar levels such as visual transitivity frames, shots, phases and macrophases.

What is a trailer?

What is the main purpose of a trailer?

Apart from being a mere presentation of a film, a trailer is a commercial item: indeed, its main target is to sell a product.

Thus, a trailer is a particular kind of advertisement and it presents a specific set of features, such as:

selection of meaningful impact images.

use of a language which is never neutral but it is always object of commercial manipulation by the mass media.

high degree of thematic compression : the meaning compression principle (it refers to the effect of the interaction of smaller scalar semiotic resources on higher scale levels, where meaning is observed and interpreted).

Trailer as advertisement ( I )

In addition to this, in our trailer we can find an interesting example of advertisement strategy.

In fact, the only time we hear a character speaking is when the protagonist exclaims: “This is great”.

In our opinion, the choice of this particular statement might be a subtle way to promote the film as a commercial product.

Indeed, the appreciation may refer both to the context of the story and to the film itself. For these reasons, the statement can be considered “defictionalised”.

However, we have to consider that trailers are a kind of advertising texts typical of our Western culture, following Malinowski’s idea of “context of culture”.

Trailer as advertisement ( II )

As we said before, a trailer is a multimodal text.

Multimodal texts are composite products of the combined effects of all the resources used to create and interpret them.

As regards the trailer structure, its basic units are:

Phase: “ Phases are text analytical units in terms of which the text as a whole can be segmented and analysed. They are the basic strategic meaning-making units in a film text.” (Gregory)

Transitions between phases are not always clear cut. Anyway, they generally coincide with a change or a break in music, speech, body movement or cutting between shots.

Shots: A shot is defined as a filmed visual sequence in which there is no spatial displacement of the camera.

A “textual hyper-Theme” is an introductory shot whose function is to predict a particular pattern of thematic development in successive shots.

Trailer as multimodal text : Structure

According to the resource integration principle, “multimodal texts combine and integrate the meaning-making resources of various semiotic modalities: language, gesture, movement, visual images, sound and so on.” (Baldry and Thibault)

As regards the “meaning compression principle”, a trailer presents as a fundamental feature, a very high degree of thematic compression.

Besides being a set of chosen images of the film it shows an evident example of meaning potential.

Trailer as multimodal text: Resources ( I )

Usually the basic units of a video text are linked to each other according to relations of interdependency which concern questions of temporal, logical and causal sequence.

These relations also have to do with the semiotic resources of logical metafunctions.

By the way, in the case of our trailer, this logical and sequential unity is far from being respected. In fact, in this trailer the difference shots do not follow the chronological order of the film plot, and, as a result, textual coherence and cohesion are clearly broken.

Trailer as multimodal text: Resources ( II )

In a video text specific colours may have a special salience or significance in relation to other features of the visual field with which they are integrated.

Generally speaking, advertisements tend to prefer the saturated colours typical of the sensory/sensual coding orientation, along with an appeal to the hyperreal world of our dreams, desires and fantasies.

In our Avatar trailer, the dominant colour is blue like the skin of the native aliens of planet Pandora and this may suggest a sense of dream-like imaginary.

Moreover, we can notice a chromatic contrast between nature represented by blue and the artificiality of soldiers and machines represented by grey.

Colour

In a video text bodily movement is not simply a passive movement in the geometric space. Rather, it is a meaning-making resource.

A movement is usually performed by a participant in relation to some other participant. Locomotory and gestual movements of the participants in the text are integrated to the overall rhythmic structure of the text itself.

In fact, some important elements such as soundtrack and camera

movements are synchronised with the participants movement to achieve this goal.

In the text we also have to consider the spatial conditions in which the movement occurs, such as: the directionality of the movement, the orientation of the movement relative to the viewer and the position of the participant(s) involved in the movement in the video screen.

Movement

In visual texts another fundamental meaning-making resource is gaze. Gaze includes different functions such as:

Transitivity frame: It is a functional semiotic unit in which the relations among participants, processes and circumstances are realised in gaze.

Gaze vector: The visual focus of a given participant may establish a gaze vector with another participant. This vector may also serve to define a relationship of affiliative motivation between participants.

Gaze ( I )

The gaze vector of the participant may also extend to some indeterminate point outside the visual field of the screen, in order to suggest a monitory function, a sense of readiness or expectation.

Gaze ( II )

Direct eye contact: Textual participants who look directly at the viewer may simulate an interactive and interpersonal relation with him.

Gaze ( III )

In our Avatar trailer, soundtrack plays an essential role in the meaning-making process.

In video texts sounds events interact with each other on the soundtrack and, as a result, they constitute a dialogic relationship with the listener.

In this trailer the acoustic flux of the soundtrack is clearly ascending. This ascending rhythm is linked to the progressively increasing dynamism of the shots which present action scenes.

This growing pitch reaches its climax with the growling of the creature attacking the protagonist. On the contrary, the following shot could be considered an anticlimax as it shows a romantic and quiet scene underlined by the fading music.

So, the general rhythm structure of the soundtrack may suggest a sense of increasing suspense and expectation remarked by the absence of dialogues.

Soundtrack

Finally, another important resource of multimodal texts is Intertextuality.

In fact, in Avatar story, we can notice many thematic similarities with the classic American tale of Pocahontas and her love for captain John Smith.

Indeed, Avatar deals with the conquest of a “New World” by a civilised people and the love story between a member of the native inhabitants and a soldier who, in the end, chooses to defend the oppressed against his own companions.

Intertextuality

3D Technology could be considered a new proxemic resource in modern films.

According to Gibson, when we have moving images projected onto a screen [...] the field of view of the camera becomes the optic array of the viewer.

This specific optic array is delimited, because it is confined in the frame.

On the contrary, everything we can see around us is to be

considered ambient optic array.

In this sense, 3D tries to combine ambient and delimited in order to make the audience feel more involved into the world of the film.

3D Technology

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Giulio, Angela & Marco