The Purpose of a Trailer

The purpose of a trailer is primarily to attract the target audience of the text into watching it, but also to create hype and give an insight into what the piece is about- this can include characters, plotlines and settings.
With regards to soap opera trailers, there are two main types of trailer. One type is the trailer that is made to attract new audiences, whereas the other is to appeal to existing audiences who already have some previous knowledge of the soap.

These two different types of soap opera trailer can be seen in the videos below.

Hollyoaks Trailer

This trailer is created to attract new audiences. This can be seen with the generic conventions such as the lack of narration or dialogue and the use of non-diegetic music. Mise-en-scene is used with their clothing, masks, lighting, settings and the ways they interact with the props to give symbolism into the types of characters in the show.

This trailer doesn't give too much information away- for a new viewer watching this, they are not informed of the character's names or relations to other people, and instead have to use the audience theory of uses and gratification, and seek out information and decode in order to understand what is happening.

Whilst this trailer's initial purpose is to attract new audiences, it can also attract existing existing audiences and keep them watching.

EastEnders Trailer

On the other hand, this trailer is the other type, created to attract existing audiences. There are differences in generic conventions with this trailer; narration, speech and more titles are used. Whilst this trailer could arguably giving away more information than the Hollyoaks trailer, new audiences would still be less knowledgeable of what is happening. Audiences who are fans of the show would recognise the characters shown and know the storylines surrounding them- and so this trailer is created to keep them watching.

This trailer uses the narration, speech, characters and other conventions to familiarise the existing audience with what is happening- focusing on steps 2, 3 and 4 of Todorov's theory of narrative to entice them and make them question what caused the disruption of equilibrium in the story and how it will be overcome.