Boyhood Teaser Trailer Deconstruction

Boyhood is a 2014 social realist drama film filmed over the course of a 12 year period to film the same actor as he grows up. This aspect is one of the main reasons for the films global success considering the film was written and produced by the same company as our film, Eighteen. 

The teaser trailer explains this production process in the titles and shows several clips o the same actor growing up.

  The following shots are 1-2 seconds long each showing a small scenario on which the character has aged;

 The trailer then states than the writer made 'cinematic history', which also sells the film due to the positive comment and giving the film a legendary status.

• The trailer then includes lots of 2-4 second shots of the young boy growing up in everyday situations such as the young boy fighting with his sister in the car and showing small childhood memories like riding a bicycle and playing with friends. 

• These shots are played with "Family of the Year's" 2012 indie rock/folk song Hero which features a gentle guitar tune and soft singing to support the nostalgic atmosphere to the scenes shown. The music builds and drum sounds are introduced as the length of the shots increase and more action is introduced as the children are with a man (maybe older brother) at a football game. The music also has a less nostalgic, cheery tone as the music develops and the father is show being controlling a violent.

(The boy is forced to have his hair cut)

(His father throws food across the table violently)

• More shots are shown of the boy as he ages and his appearance and voice changes.
• The shots are short to keep the enigma and engage the audience to tempt them to go ands see the film.

The end screen features a number of positive critic reviews

• There is little dialogue in the trailer which is also enigma.
• The trailer ends with the diegetic dialogue of a man asking the boy;                                      "What do you want to be, Mason? What do you want to do?" 
• Which leads to further enigma as the audience will want to know the answer.

Evaluation

• Overall, the trailer has a good balance between footage and titles to give a restricted outline to the films narrative by introducing the characters and illustrating the areas of disequilibrium; but not going into great detail about whether the problem is repaired etc.