The People Who Grind Out Movie Trailers
theringer.com
theringer.com
I've gotten very picky about what constitutes a 'good' trailer. Any trailer that has any of these:
* an overly dramatic deep manly narrator
* is actually a 'clip' rather than a trailer
* is actually a 'making of' rather than a trailer
* has a pre-trailer to the trailer
and a bunch of other things, gets deleted immediately. Thought I would share ;) I also have a dave's trailer page scraper if anybody is interested/obsessed like I am.
I very actively avoid all trailers for movies that I'm going to see. Modern blockbuster trailers just ruin the movie.
There is so much drek out there a strong filter and upturned nose is essential to carefully picking something that won't waste your time and money. Otherwise you're saddled with Transformers 12: Re-revengance the pre-sequel. Or Star Wars 8 ;)
It's how the same old variation of a story is told, how well did they pull it off, was it charming, was the dialogue and it's delivery any good, etc.
And watching a movie with another person changes the movie again. Or watching it at a cinema surrounded pigs at their troughs.
So many ways to appreciate movie watching that a trailer can't ever touch.
Some do. If they contain:
* the protagonist's set-up
* the antagonist's set-up
* an explanation of the protagonist's challenges
* the protagonist overcoming the challenges
* the nature of the twist
* (sometimes the twist itself is hinted at)
* any romantic relationship of significance is both shown and the direction it ultimately goes is implied
* half the big awesome SFX scenes
* half the funny scenes
* almost every character of significance to the plot
then there isn't much left, I know almost all the key checkpoints, who has to be where and do what and what action has to occur. It's pretty much sketched out. There's minimal suspense because I know who can't die and who has to be where at the end of the movie.
> And even if you feel they do, knowing the outline of a movie isn't going to ruin the actual movie experience itself.
It definitely can. Part of a story is experiencing it for the first time, watching it unfold and not knowing what will happen. Trailers take that away from you. "Oh yeah, I've seen this fight sequence and heard that joke before" just doesn't carry the same weight. And when I have a checklist of people with places to be and action scenes to happen, I can predict things. "Well, I know there's going to be a twist because X has to fight Y in the streets and it looks like they're getting along OK as we approach 1h 20m mark."
There's minimal surprise left, which really hampers my ability to empathize with the characters and engage in the story.
But a movie is just a 90 minute experience. It's nice to maximize it. And one simple approach is to avoid giving in to curiosity by watching its 30 second summary for the same reason you don't read plot outlines on Wikipedia before reading books or tv show episodes.
Like taking apart a running grandfather clock to see it tick.
Movies and TV series or even books are similar to me. I do enjoy digging deep into TVTropes and AllTheTropes so I can whlie watching a movie, take it apart and see how it ticks.
How the movie achieves the suspension of disbelief, how the heroes journey is being implemented in lockstep with the villain (if there is even one) or how a character is built, what parts make them what they are.
I think it's more of a hackers spirit rather than HN. I read the manual of the movie so I can take it apart like some hacker might read a device manual to be able to take it apart more easily.
You still enjoy it, looking for small details and appreciating how good or not the magician. But you won't get that sense of amusement of not knowing what's going on or where it's going.
An outline kills a movie because you can anticipate scenes. Oh, here's this guy. I remember a fight scene from the trailer where Tom Cruise jumps him. I wonder when that happens. The movie clearly introduces him as a good guy. I wonder when you're supposed to find out he's one of the goons.
If it wasn't such a major issue, you wouldn't have people like me and many I know who avoid trailers entirely.
If the movie is good, then the trailer does nothing but dampen the experience.
A good recent example is "Thor: Ragnarok", I usually avoid trailers but I watched this one because I don't care much for superhero movies anyway. They reveal in the trailer there is a Thor vs Hulk fight. Then I actually watched the movie and I realized they spent a good 15 mins building up the encounter between Thor and a mysterious champion, and the reveal itself is clearly supposed to be a major twist. I definitely felt the trailer took from my experience...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbGNcoB2Y4I
The movie itself was so-so, but the trailer? Outstanding.
If you're wondering why this is done, it's because when the trailer is shown on Youtube as a pre-roll ad, users have the ability to "skip" the ad after 5 seconds. Thus, the trailer needs to "hook" the viewer in the first 5 seconds to entice them to keep watching the whole thing, and deliver a title card right before the 5 second mark so that they can increase brand awareness even if the user does choose to skip the ad after the 5 second timer is up. This leads to the first 5 seconds of the trailer being used as a trailer for the actual trailer.
Here's several examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBezc1S1BAQ
As a side note, if you ever wondered why all those trailers sounded like they were voiced by the same guy, it's because they were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_LaFontaine
To me that is almost ideal. Doesn't reveal the entire movie, but gives you an impression of what the movie is like.
James Bond always open with this action scene that isn't really relevant for the plot. Makes for great promotional clip, as it really shows off what the movie is about, but not really any of the movie.
It worked out really well for him. The less expectations he had, the more he appreciated the work of art for what it really was.
It's a great philosophy, but it is tedious to time it late to a movie showing exactly right so that you miss the trailers.
Might look goofy but I'm not exactly the center of attention.
Sometimes you literally don't even need to watch the movie, you just got the tl;dw in the trailer.
I refuse to watch trailers for movies I might see, because they ruin the experience since I know everything that's coming.
A made up example, but I've seen similar: let's take an ensemble superhero action piece. You see a clip of a scene in the trailer where superhero A is in mortal peril, set against a desert backdrop. Compelling, but when I see the movie in theaters, there's an action set piece where superheroes A and B are fighting against villains C and D. B is temporarily incapacitated, and it looks like C and D have the drop on A. Unfortunately, this fight has an ocean backdrop. As such, all dramatic tension is gone, since I know A makes it to a desert I haven't seen yet.
I've had some success making a strict rule of watching only teasers (~30 seconds), or the first 30 seconds of a normal trailer, where they have time to set up the basics, but not enough to ruin anything. If I'm at a movie, I'll just close my eyes after that point, since I can't fast forward, and removing visuals is usually enough.
I wish movie makers would keep that in mind.
I don't follow your logic. You already know A makes it out OK, because it's a superhero movie. Why doesn't that ruin the dramatic tension equally?
Usually I avoid trailers. It's marketing, spoilers, trying to sell you the movie. For me, they might be clever, but that's all. The Payback trailer is clever because it has no dialog... https://youtu.be/ji6aaZRACew
Drama behind the scenes on Payback saw the director fired by the studio and replaced, a completely new ending written and shot.
Normally when studios mess with the writing, the film suffers, but not in this case. The theatrical release of Payback is better than the "director's cut" released on video a few years later. The director's cut has a boring ending, just generic gun fights and a mess of scenes. The theatrical release has a good twist, more substance and style.
“Sometimes we’ll start on a trailer before they’ve even started filming,” Gritton says. “We just break down the script. Then we’ll get dailies—literally everything they’ve shot, hours and hours.” The dailies are covered in ghostly watermarks and stamped with the producer’s and house’s name for security’s sake, making them nearly unwatchable and of no real use to pirates. Theoretically.
Given the extraordinary and time-consuming process of CGI, sometimes green screens, motion capture dots on actor’s faces, maybe a cardboard cutout where a dragon will eventually go are still visible in these early cuts. “We’ll pick what we think are the best takes,” Gritton says. “The majority of the time it’s not what ends up in the film, which is why you see stuff in the trailer that you may not recognize later.”
As a recent example of this, there are several trailers for Baby Driver where we hear Doc describe Baby as "Young Mozart in a go-kart," [1] but this line is never heard spoken in the film (though we do see it written on one of Baby's cassette tapes).
Here's an article with some examples for you though.
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/movies/47071/41-trailer-s...
There were even toys hinting to a scene which never played out.