Saving private Ryan Trailer

The beginning of the trailer is unconventional, it shows images of world war two cut between zooms and pans of letters with non-diegetic sounds of people reading the letters out, they are telegrams of the reported death of three men. More non-diegetic sound is played, a messenger speaking to a colonel over the top of images from World War Two again being cut between captions of three brothers names who have died, linking back to the letters read out earlier. The voice over then says the Mother of these three men is receiving all three telegrams of her sons death at the same time and there's a fourth brother still alive. The colonel then says they will get the fourth brother out, alive. This shows us the inspiration from Robert Rodat and also sets up the plot of the film.

We then comeback to a conventional trailer with revealing the main character, Tom Hanks. Non-diegetic sound of slow paced classical music. Brief shots introducing characters and important scenes. Names of actors appear in the shot with the close ups and medium close ups of the actors to anchor each other. The title of the film appears and then in a separate caption shows the director clearly but discretely