Film Education -

Film trailers are intended to get audiences excited about seeing a film at the cinema.  However, trailers are also a form of condensed storytelling. In just a couple of minutes a trailer can establish genre and mood, introduce character and setting and establish plot and key themes.

As narrative and persuasive texts, trailers are ideal for primary literacy. The short duration and strong visual and auditory content means that trailers engage pupils of all ages, abilities and learning styles.  On-screen texts are a good introduction to strands 9 (Creating and Shaping Texts) and 10 (Text Structure and Organisation) of the literacy framework and create opportunities for children to discuss and articulate their knowledge and understanding.

The Primary Framework for Literacy recommends the use of film trailers.  A Year 4 non-fiction unit on persuasive texts suggests;

"Watch a trailer for a popular children's film. Discuss the purpose of the text and the emotions it is intended to provoke in readers.  Discuss how the soundtrack, sound effects, voice-over and moving images were used to persuade children to go and see the film...

Plan a trailer to promote a film using key moments from the film. Prepare a written voiceover script to persuade a reader to see a film.  Demonstrate how to combine words, music and images to convince the reader".
http://www.teachfind.com/national-strategies/complete-teaching-sequence-6

The Year 5 Film Narrative unit includes an animated short as an accompanying resource but a trailer is also suitable for introducing pupils to filmmaking techniques and developing their film language.  As the unit suggests;

"Use key points in a film to discuss features and themes.  Explore approaches made by the filmmaker to create moods, pace and viewpoint.  Develop children's film language by identifying how colour, light, sound and camera angles have been used to tell the narrative..."
http://www.teachfind.com/national-strategies/year-5-narrative-unit-5---film-narrative