Shutter Island Trailer Editing

For this blog I chose the trailer for the movie “Shutter Island” by Martin Scorsese, because I think the editing made a huge contribution to the story telling in the advertisement. The way the shots are organized is to introduce the viewer to the story and build suspense from the beginning. The trailer is mostly made up of alternating close ups, long shots, and wide pans.


The first shot of the trailer is a ghost ship, which tells the viewer this is will be a scary movie, with a few quick flashes of hanging hooks and naked disturbed-looking people. Then, the camera pans through the gates of the asylum from the viewer’s point of view so it is as if we walk through the gate ourselves. Now, we are trapped on the island with DiCaprio. After that, the images become scarier, with multiple long shots of dark, leaky hallways, dramatic contrasts of light and dark in the lighting, and more close-ups of DiCaprio, where he looks stressed out, sweating, washing his face and panicking. There are alternating aerial pans of the island, with its jagged rocks and dark water, and shallow shots of drowned corpses or crazy inmates. The final shot is of a cliff, with DiCaprio’s hand barely hanging on.


In terms of composition, this trailer is excellent: even though the cuts are obvious, the viewer accepts them because of the story they tell. The long hallways, the dramatic contrasts, and the changes of the actor’s face all function to get the viewer interested in spending the $12 to see the rest of the movie. The trailer is edited specifically for this purpose, and it succeeds. It includes a narrative, builds suspense, and introduces a conflict, but gives no resolution. We want to know: will he pull himself up from that cliff? Will he get to the bottom of this mystery?


Click here to view "Shutter Island" video