Advertising for films has changed. It used to be that all you needed was a stylish poster and a good review and you'd be there. But now the posters are simply window dressing for the all-powerful movie trailer.
We see trailers in the cinema, on television and now everywhere on the internet (including this website!). Trailers were once only used for feature films, but with the production value of documentaries ever increasing - with many even making it onto the silver screen themselves - trailers are now being used to entice the audience into watching documentary films as well.
All in all, trailers might seem a difficult thing to love. They lie and deceive, and when they're not lying or deceiving, they're being too honest, revealing the plot. They're nakedly focused on selling a product, intent on convincing us every movie is the greatest ever made when most cannot possibly be. And yet they remain irresistible.
It may seem obvious that a general rule is to use some of your most visually stunning shots in your trailer. But there exist other concepts behind creating a trailer.
Great trailers are always about raising questions but never answering them, and about whetting your appetite. The Shutter Island trailer excels in this. We think too much has been revealed, when really we've been shown very little.
A beautifully created trailer may not need to explicitly tell us anything at all. The trailer of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has no dialogue or voiceover and is simply cut to the rapid beats of Trent Reznor and Karen O's cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song".
You hardly ever see a movie trailer campaign relying on only one trailer. In fact the best campaigns are usually those that snbowball. Here is the deconstruction of the different trailers involved in advertising the new film The Wolverine, as further detailed on this site, in order of release.
This tweaser is a six-second teaser for a 20-second teaser for a two-minute teaser for a 2:32-length theatrical trailer for a feature-length movie. It packs 20 separate shots, that’s 3.3 cuts per second. It was a challenging experiment with form, said editor Skip Chaisson. He had to choose shots that would work on Vine’s square aspect ratio and audio that would sound decent on crappy phone speakers. But it still tells a story. Which is? “Wolverine is a badass,” he says. “That’s pretty much it.”
The teaser includes shots from the big CGI scene in which Wolverine battles a nemesis atop one of Japan’s famous bullet trains. In the past, the craziest effects didn’t appear in previews because they happened too late in production. But trailers are now enough of a product themselves to justify changing everyone’s schedules. Fox rushed the train scene into visual effects so that the editing team could splice it into the teaser.
It’s similar but not identical to its US counterpart. In the US event is king. The international markets try to focus on the character and the emotion. Here, everything feels heavier, with music and title cards to match: “This year, when he’s most vulnerable, he’s most dangerous.”
Tony Sella, chief creative officer at Fox, had just two requirements: fill out Wolverine’s emotional backstory and tease the main villain. He was answered with the best ad yet, complete with our first good look at Wolverine’s nemesis, the Silver Samurai. Although the opening nightmare sequence seems to suggest certain plot hints, but only suggest.
Editing software is affordable, which explains the zillion fan-made trailers on YouTube. Some, including this one by moviemagic5, went up a day after the teaser was released. It might even lead to bigger things. Michael McIntyre, head of studio mOcean, says he mines fan trailers for new hires. “They’re doing it almost for free out there,” he says. “Let’s bring them to Hollywood and ruin them, break their hearts.”
Trailers are an advertising device. They are designed to seduce us, to leave us wanting more. That's why we are so addicted to them. That's why "the trailers were the best part of the cinema" is becoming a cliche and why so many websites are dedicated to them.
Want to express your opinion on which is the best documentary or trailer and why? Visit the comments section to discuss.