The purpose of the film trailer 2012 is to advertise the film and increase the margin of potentional viewers thus increasing profit margins. The film is generally directed at men who are usually associated with liking action movies and this is a action film. Although the film has a few genre's mixed in the prominent genre is definitely action as it has a lot of montage clips showing buildings falling down mass destruction overall apocalyptic situations. This film is ground-breaking as it features a lot of things people have never done before in a film i.e. Monumental buildings crashing down and being destroyed, entire countries capsizing, meteors crashing down onto a motor home with half of it being destroyed. This particular montage creates a want-to-see effect as it looks epic. Another want-to-see effect is at the start of the film trailer when copy says “Mankind's Earliest civilisation” “Warned us” this particular copy makes the audience wonder what they warned us about. “This day would come.” The image used at this point is of a solar eclipse which could be an emphasis like saying all-hope-is gone - light is fading- God has deserted you – We are forsaken.
The copy fades and shows a clip of birds flying away/deserting us. The next clip is of a news broadcast with journalist diegetic sound “The Mayan calender which predicts the end of time.” In the broadcast it starts with a clip of a Mayan temple and then it moves onto a picture of a mass suicide at the base of the temple; the shot ends and has a brief white noise sound the effect this has is like turning on a TV or turning it off. The next shot is a video of a mob pushing over a police car in the middle of a crowded town, it then shows the Statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro crashing down as if saying “God has deserted you.” This is one of the ground-breaking clips in the movie which creates a want-to-see effect the diegetic sound at this point is saying “to occur on the 21st of December