Trailer Review

 Mad Max  George Miller  R  May 9, 1980

     In a future of total disregard of human governance, Mad Max embodies the last hope of justice and sanity as he endures the horrors of the aftermath of his killing of the Dark Knight, the leader of a terrorist bike gang. 

        Mad Max creates an audacious and attractive trailer in its use of constant movement, provocative diction of the narrator, and angled shots. Mad Max is a trailer of transitions. The clips are only five seconds, cohesive, and tell a story without providing the viewer with excess information. The transitions work in movement. A shot of a car coming towards the camera would seem as though the camera would be damaged; at the last second, the shot would switch to the car driving away, but this shot would expose the reckless speed of the car. These surprise transitions expose the chaos and the accelerated nature of Mad Max's world, thus concluding that it is a Dystopia. The shots that comprise of these transitions are taken from the view of Mad Max towards his world. As such, many shots are of people directly talking to the camera. This upsets the viewer, and makes the viewer feel uncomfortable with the dissonance of something unreal on the screen becoming upset with that person. Mad Max's character is portrayed in almost secretive shots, ones that are taken from behind walls, and from the sides of cars. The ability to see Mad Max's world as Mad Max encourages the viewer to understand his struggle, but the reasons why he continues to rebel against total rebellion. 

             In order to better explain the shots and the transitions, there is a narrator with a diction that pertains to riddles. The narrator evokes a sort of fear and paranoid sense in the viewer in as he describes that "somewhere, on the abandoned highways of tomorrow, where law is another word for vengeance, where justice is a distant memory" Mad Max lives. There is a lonelieness in "abandoned highways of tomorrow", and this loneliness devolves itself to fear when he says "law is another word for vengeance". Ultimately, this loneliness and fear is epitomized in "justice is a distant memory", and the viewer is awakened to the dire conditions of the Dystopia. It would be wise for my group to use a narrator, because this way we can truly evoke fear and strange emotions in our viewers to convey our message, and the awful dystopia we will have created. The concept of shots taken from the view of our protagonist is very relevant to our society, in which people live on the internet and with screens. We could employ this by constantly shooting through the world that the protagonist sees through the screens. Our trailer would have to be fast paced, as this excites the viewer, and is excellent for quality shots, our transitions will thus be cut and quick. Mad Max is a compelling, well made trailer, and it will be very useful reference for the Dystopian Trailer Project.