Miracles from Heaven: a Heartwarming Story

Introduction

For this assignment, I had chosen the movie trailer from the movie Miracles from Heaven, which was released 3 years ago in 2016. The reason I had chosen this trailer is because the trailer has given enough sneak peeks and insight to cover the overall story of the movie. This movie is very suitable for a wide variety of audiences, ranging from young to old. The movie as well as the trailer gives off a very contemporary and family warmth-esque feeling to the viewer which they can fully feel when watching the movie itself. Furthermore, this movie is based on a true story, which for some might be hard to believe, but it would be further explained at the end of the movie by the real main character herself.

Summary of Miracles from Heaven

To give a brief synopsis/summary of the trailer and/or the movie itself, as per released by sony Pictures Entertainment, Miracles From Heaven is based on the incredible true story of the Beam family. When Christy (Jennifer Garner) discovers her 10-year-old daughter Anna (Kylie Rogers) has a rare, incurable disease, she becomes a ferocious advocate for her daughter's healing as she searches for a solution. After Anna has a freak accident, an extraordinary miracle unfolds in the wake of her dramatic rescue that leaves medical specialists mystified, her family restored and their community inspired.

The Cast of Miracles from Heaven

The main characters in this movie would be Christy Beam, played by Jennifer Garner, and also Annabel Beam, who is played by Kylie Rogers. Jennifer Garner, who plays Christy Beam, starred in the television series Alias (2001) as Agent Sydney Bristow, who works for the Central Intelligence Agency. For her work, she has received four consecutive Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She has also received four Golden Globe nominations and won once, as well as received two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and won once. She has appeared in numerous other television production as well as such films as Elektra (2005), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Daredevil (2003), Pearl Harbor (2001) and Dude, Where's My Car? (2000).

On the other hand, Kylie Rogers, who plays Annabel Beam, starred in her first major film which she was the lead role of 'Sunshine' in Space Station 76 (2014), working alongside Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Matt Bomer and Marisa Coughlan. That role was followed closely by William Monahan's psychological thriller, Mojave (2015), playing the daughter of Garrett Hedlund; and Finders Keepers (2014), starring opposite Jaime Pressly. Kylie's first experience in television was the recurring role of 'Sarah Nelson' in ABC's Private Practice (2007) (2012). Since then, she has appeared in various television shows on all major networks, most notably guest starring as 'Molly Goodwin' in CBS's hit, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000) (April 2013).

The Multimedia Elements in the Trailer

The movie trailer contains multimedia elements of text, audio, animation and also video. At the beginning of the trailer, music plays to give the viewers a sense of happiness and joy when watching the first snippet from the movie. This specific type of music has been carefully placed alongside the snippet is to stimulate and simulate a sense of happiness and joy in the viewer’s brain and mind. Research indicates that music stimulates emotions through specific brain circuits. We can easily see how music and the brain engage mood and emotion when a child smiles and begins to dance to a rhythm. He is experiencing an uplifted mood of joy from the music. We also see this when parent and child connect through song. Have you ever listened to a mother singing a lullaby to her newborn baby? It is probably one of the most significant bonding experiences between people you will ever witness.

Listening to music can create peak emotions, which increase the amount of dopamine, a specific neurotransmitter that is produced in the brain and helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. We often feel emotions are experienced from our heart, but an enormous part of emotional stimulus is communicated through the brain. Our newfound understanding of how music affects the brain and heart is leading to innovative ways to utilize music and the brain to create emotional understanding between people.

On the other hand, there are many video elements in this movie trailer, in other words, many movie snippets are stitched together for the purpose of this movie trailer. Not only the snippets provide sneak peeks and also insight into what this movie is all about, these snippets can also be used for marketing purposes. How do movie trailers do this? According to the master of Hollywood teasers, John Long, “A great trailer has its own mini-story.” Long was recently nominated for multiple Golden Trailer Awards (yeah, it’s a thing) and he told Fast Company that he recommends breaking down the whole movie into a trailer with a “three-act setup” where you introduce a problem, complicate it, and then bring it back home and hint at a grand finale. This works, he claims, because audiences have grown more sophisticated over the years and aren’t satisfied with long, linear shots of people just talking.

Function of Text in a Movie Trailer

Text functions as a way of conveying information from one to another. In the movie industry, specifically movie trailers, text functions as a way to bring anticipation to the audience, as well as telling the audience about the flow of the movie itself. Moreover, texts in movies also functions as a way to convey information to the mass audience, particularly the movie title, rating, release dates, cast, and all other information about the movie, which all depends on the producers/director on how much of text, or in other words information to be put out the audience. Some producers/directors sometimes would opt for not text at all, only using other multimedia elements such as audio, animation, videos and or/ images. In this movie trailer, at the end of the video, there are a few frames in the movie trailer that contain text that highlights the flow of the movie. At the end of the trailer, it shows the release date of the movie as well as the title of the movie. This tells when the movie would be released to the public for viewing

On the other side of the spectrum, there are also elements of animation in this movie trailer as well. However, the animations has been merged with the text to form a solid frame that has been spread over the course of the whole trailer. The selection of colour as well is carefully selected to compliment the feeling and theme of the movie, which is the colour blue. According to the psychological side of the properties of colours, Blue is the colour of the mind and is essentially soothing; it affects us mentally. Strong blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter, soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. Consequently it is serene and mentally calming. To briefly summarise this, the colour blue was specifically selected for this trailer as it promotes calmness and a soothing feeling on the viewers. It also unconsciously lets the viewers know that at the end of the movie that Annabel would be fine in the end. Overall, each of the 4 elements are carefully put together so that the audience/viewer can have a brief experience of the feeling of the movie before watching the full movie itself.

Strengths of Miracles from Heaven

There were 2 strengths in this movie trailer. Firstly, the usability for human eyes. The movie trailer centralises the character almost in the middle, rather than multiple events/things happening at once in one single frame. This helps the viewers understand the movie trailer more and what to expect when they watch the full movie for themselves. On the other hand, centralising the characters also helps the viewers to digest them one by one, and slowly begin to understand the plot and the flow of the movie without the assistance of any texts at any random point of the movie trailer itself. In this manner, it promotes visual understanding without the assistance of any accompanying text to help the viewer understand what is going on.

On the technical side of thing, this method also can be related to eye tracking. Technically speaking, eye tracking is the process of measuring eye movements to determine where a person is looking, what they are looking at, and for how long their gaze is in a particular spot. Because our eyes are one of the primary tools we use for decision making and learning eye tracking is commonly used by researchers and businesses looking to study human behavior because it’s the only way to accurately and objectively measure and understand visual attention. In my opinion, the producers who made the trailer had made good use of this method of letting the viewers know who and/or what is the main subject currently in the shot.

Secondly, the sense of perceived interactivity. In my opinion, even the movie trailer had did a great job in using the method of perceived interactivity. We felt how the actors felt, we felt the suspense and atmosphere of the movie/movie trailer, even though we are not involved with it ourselves. The producers did a great job in bringing in this method even on the movie trailer itself. The use of specific types of music to also alleviate our feelings into feeling happiness or even to bring us sadness. Also, the use of specific scenes also has an effect on us, as when watching the scenes/snippets we can feel how the characters felt and also had a unconscious simulation in our mind about the atmosphere in the movie. Again, the producers had really done a great job in helping the viewers immerse themselves even though it was only just a movie trailer.

Flaws of Miracles from Heaven Trailer

Even in good movies, there are still flaws contained in them. One of the flaws that I found in the video in terms of content was there were too less texts to tell the flow of the movie at the first half of the movie trailer. Although the snippets from the movie were good enough, I observed that it was a bit too many snippet. I decided to show five of my friends the same trailer, and only to receive feedback that only 2 of my friends had actually understood the movie. This shows that that text plays a very vital role in telling the movie’s story to the audience and how it helps them understand what is going on and also the flow of the movie, not to mention the theme of the movie as well.

On the other side of the spectrum, there should be at least frame or two where it shows the actors who are acting in them. I also had a small test to see whether my same five friends were able to spot who was the main actress in the trailer for the movie (Jennifer Garner). Out of the five, only one had forgotten her name, but she could recognize her face. There are some people who can only recognise the faces of the actor rather than remembering her name. This goes to show you that name placement in movie is at times quite effective to tell who is who in the movie.

Furthermore, the trailer producers should or could at least added the release dates for different regions, just for the convenience of eager viewers who would want to watch the movie in their region/part of the world. Again, this is for the convenience for eager viewers as there are some cases that individuals had gone to the theatre to catch their favourite movie, only to go home disappointed being told that the movie that they wanted to watch has not been released in their region. Producers can also go the extra mile by creating trailers that are tailored for each region, with the exception that the whole trailer should be remained, with only the release dates and other information about the movie changed to fit the region’s timing and such.

References

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2. Gillespie, C. (n.d.). What Movie Trailers Can Teach You About Video Marketing. [online] Vidyard. Available at: https://www.vidyard.com/blog/movie-trailers-can-teach-video-marketing/
3. Goldstein, B. (n.d.). 4 Surprising Ways That Music Changes Your Brain and Influences Your Mood. [online] Consciouslifestylemag.com. Available at: https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/music-and-the-brain-affects-mood/
4. Hannigan, K. (n.d.). Jennifer Garner. [online] IMDb. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004950/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
5. IMDb. (n.d.). Kylie Rogers. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4814017/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
6. IMDb. (n.d.). Miracles from Heaven (2016). [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4257926/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
7. Tobiipro.com. (n.d.). What is eye tracking? How is eye tracking valuable in research?. [online] Available at: https://www.tobiipro.com/blog/what-is-eye-tracking/