Trailer Analysis: Goodfellas

Goodfellas (1990), illustrates on three decades of the mafia, with main focus on Henry Hill, who achieves his life long dream of being a gangster at 14 years of age, seeing his crime life, love life and drug life, Goodfellas shows the true representation of what having a role in the mafia brought, with a volatile and aggressive psycho as a best friend, and murdering partner, Henry and the mafia members lives start to unravel.

The trailer starts on a black background, hearing the non diegetic utterance of an american/italian man, stating "Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut", through this immediately the receiving audience can gather that through the term "rat", the film will be covering crime, and also sets dominance on this character instantly, the scene then opens to the male whilst still speaking this quote in a medium close up shot, showing the character "jimmy", with his arm wrapped round a younger boys shoulder as he points near his face, gathering the audience to presume the younger boy as a protege of sorts to this man. As soon as Jimmy finishes speaking a loud low pitch jazz song starts to play as the screen cuts quickly to a black screen with a bold red text appearing stating, " A Martin Scorsese Picture", Martin Scorsese is a well known and critically acclaimed director, due to films such as the 2 time oscar winning Raging bull (1980), and Mean Streets (1973), all of which star Robert De Niro, and all share the same crime theme genre, therefore this being mentioned early on in the trailer would attract and target a certain audience.

The camera then opens to the same teenaged boy using a crowbar to smash the back window of a car in a level medium shot late at night, then cutting to him pouring gasoline into the car in a close up shot, then continuing to throw a match into the car, Over the top of this we hear " as far back as i can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster", to which we cut to the teenaged boy running rapidly from a gated car park, as the whole parking lot explodes behind him in a wide shot. Impacting the audience to believe the older man at the beginning of the trailer as impacted this boy badly to take part in crime that isn't for his benefit.

Then cutting to a medium shot of a door opening to the teenaged boy called "Henry", where he is shown uttering the diegetic sentence "hey mom what do you think ?!", his mise en scene shown him to be in a brown business suit, which connotes what a 1950's american gangster would have worn, showing Henry to be influenced by his surroundings and idolising the gangsters around him and wanting to dress and act like them as a sense of belonging and being cool. Although his mother is shown to have been the one to answer the door in a medium shot reverse shot style, where she looks him up and down disapprovingly telling him " you look like a gangster !". Furthermore, detail to the surroundings both behind Henry and his mother, suggest that they do not live in a particularly friendly or high standard environment, due to the brick stained building and fencing behind Henry, and the stained and chipped door and door frames in his mother's shot. Therefore showing that Henry perhaps idolises the gangsters around him due to the apparent easy money they make without needing jobs, whereas Henry's family perhaps has little money, hence why he turns to crime.

We then cut to a vertical panning medium shot of a male character in a grey "gangster" suit, smoking a cigarette, where we hear the non diegetic narration "By the time I grew up", showing the audience that we will be watching the events of the movie through Henry's once eyes, perhaps to see the mafia and their doings through a more innocent perspective due to Henry's late delve into gang crime. We cut to a high angle medium shot of a man firing a gun through a brown paper bag from the passenger side of a vehicle, which usually is associated with robbery's, showing that Henry has continued this way of life, and seemingly enjoys it due to the following cut to Henry driving the vehicle whilst hysterically laughing.

Then moving on to fast paced clips back to back, we see Henry at a dinner table in a restaurant, presumably on a date in a level medium shot, where his date asks  "what do you do ", where Henry replies " Im in construction", proving to the audience that he is dedicated to what was said to him when he was younger about "keeping his mouth shut" about the life of crime that he earns a living out of. Then suddenly cutting to a fast medium angled shot of Henry in the backseat of a car with three other people as he quickly punches the man next to him in the face, showing him to be deceitful to people who should  be important to him, such as his wife, which is shown to be the woman he was on a date with as a slightly high angle shot shows Henry getting married to her.

Another shot shows Henry watching his mentor Jimmy as he wraps a telephone cord around a man neck, as he menacingly strangles him in front of Henry, as Henry is seen smiling and laughing as he does it, it illustrates a sadistic tone to the picture due to the enjoyment of inflicting pain onto others, and perhaps this is in course of Henry's gangster mentor, inciting the humour in violence.

After this we hear Henry state in his non diegetic narrative that "killings came to be accepted", confirming to the audience that blood will be spilt in this movie, this is then shown after Henry says this, as the camera cuts to a wide shot of smoggy scene where a red light in projecting silhouettes digging a hole, most likely to be assumed as a grave, as when the two of the three men make jokes in a shot reverse shot with Henry as he holds his nose, about body parts in a way of meat, it truly shows the  lack of fear and guilt to killing an individual, showing the audience that the characters shown within the mafia are evil people. This is accurately shown through the conventional red tones, which are associated with blood, violence and anger.

After extreme close ups of a gun and hearing it being fired, the soundtrack cuts to a more mellow and slow paced piano based track, showing Henry remove wads of cash from the inside of his trousers, showing that he is now having to smuggle money around with him in secret, showing a dangerous turn in the plot to follow, making the audience want to find out as to why Henry is having this problem. But saying in his narrative that " to live any other way was nuts", showing that he perhaps gets thrills out of the dangerous and risky life, because of the outcomes of having money and being treated with a lot of respect by the public due to fear. Though the camera cuts to a scene where just like in the fist shot of the trailer jimmy has his arm around henry as they laugh around a pile of money in a wide shot as the camera pans into them.

The scene then fades to the black background with the films title in a blood red, in bold and thick text to stand off of the screen, connoting the blood and violence that is to take essence in the picture. The camera then cuts to numerous fast paced clips of episodes in Henry's and the mafia's life of high and low moments, such as Henry's wedding day, which is seen in a close up shot of him and his wife dancing, Henry watching his friend in a medium shot as he punches someone hard in the face, Where Henry is warmly greeted by Jimmy with a hug in a medium shot, Henry and two accomplices in a red ambient tone as they looked ambiguously downwards in a low angle medium shot, and where Henry and Jimmy greet and hug each other in a bar. All of these fast clips showing the audience that the film will show the highs and lows of Henry's life. The screen then fades to black displaying the main actors in the films names in a small bold red text, then finally the films title again with a small white sentence underneath written as "three decades of life in the mafia".