Multimodal Language of the Intertitles in the Trailers of American Romance-Comedy Feature Films

Abstract

Film trailers are regarded as a truly unique form of film advertising constructed on the basis of specific narrative and promotional structures. By means of adequate mini-narratives presented in intertitles, they not only convey some twists of the plot in various comedies, but also create a specific discourse which is marked by the interplay of different elements: language, topography and colour. From the perspective of multimodality, these elements are semiotic modes with a specific communicative potential. The analysis of the interplay between the contents of the intertitles and their typographic elements has shown that typographic variations, especially the ones related to the size and form of typefaces and to their regularity, are often employed to produce a targeted message. Colour can be considered an effective referent to the key words, semantic units or contrastive emotions in the intertitles. Due to existing temporal and spatial limitations and the multiple goals of film trailers, the interplay of semiotic modes noted in these visual products is even more intensive, salient and outspoken. In fact, this phenomenon is seen at its best in the intertitles giving the title of comedies.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.27.13746