The lights go down. The theater goes dark. First come the commercials. Then the Jimmy Fund asks for money. Some guy starts blathering about file sharing. Finally, we have come to the sweetest moment in the "pre-show entertainments". The movie trailer.
The film trailer has existed since the Mesopotamians met the Atlantians in the year negative 3000 according to my own make-believe history of the world. In more traditional academic circles, it is said the trailer was first shown after the film. Wow. I can hear your gasps of amazement at the depth of my cinematic knowledge. Let's plumb the aforementioned deeps as I teach you the ways of the contemporary trailer.
An institution all its own, the trailer has developed some noticeable clich?©s. Almost every trailer has an omniscient narrator. Said narrator loves to refer to protagonists by name and reveal the entire plot. For example, imagine the following speech said in Movie Announcer Voice that gets particularly throaty at the end of the final sentence: "It was a normal day for Chubbs McGilicutti. But then he realized he has a problem. Now, he has three hours to deliver the galaxy key while battling the insectazoid forces of evil and avoiding the Neptune Police." Undoubtedly an amazing movie, but all the mystery is removed. Also notice that any foreign film will use the narrator exclusively and take great lengths to having languages other than English spoken.
Another clich?© is titling. They always title the end of the trailer with obscenely generic things. For instance "KINGDOMS WILL FALL. A MAN WILL RISE." Or, "BEYOND FATE. BEYOND TIME. LIES...THE PUTTING GREEN."
Clich?©s can only lead to mediocrity, so it comes as no surprise that most trailers leave audiences with an "eh" feeling. But only a select few trailers can manage to be completely terrible. Most of these bad trailers include action montages. This is when the trailer editor takes small pieces from action scenes and set them to an instantly recognizable hard-rock song to make the film look exciting. When the editor realizes he doesn't have enough footage, he starts to cut in non-action shots, like someone walking or driving a car. No matter what, there will always, always be either a head turn or something jumping into the camera.
Another way a movie trailer can fail is if it incorrectly markets the movie. The trailer for "The Matrix" played up on the fact that the Matrix was an indefinable mysterious construct and that the movie would be a mind bender that plays with reality. This has a great appeal to the art house crowd, but mainstream audiences had to find out about the movie through word of mouth and DVD. Instead, the trailer should have told us two things: 1) What is the Matrix? "The Matrix" is a premise for allowing characters to kick ass. 2) This movie has copious amounts of ass-kicking.
Now, let's take a case example of a terrible trailer. Our subject will be the trailer for "Man of the House," starring Tommy Lee Jones. Watch it, and then meet me back here. Back?
Yes, I know, I apologize that you had to see it; sometimes teaching is painful. Did you catch the main character's name and motivation in the first two seconds? Did you see the painfully awkward switch in tone? The amount of time it spends on gross stereotypes? The nearly equal amount of time it spends on a fat man mugging? Did you count the number of recent top 40 songs? How about old ones? Now you can fully understand the sheer horror that is a bad trailer.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Oreo to the bad trailers' Hydrox, is the excellent trailer. These are few and far between, but when they appear, they become an instantly watchable and repeatable aural and visual experience. Exhibit A: The trailer for "Garden State". Basically a compilation of the most visually appealing shots in the movie set to a soothing techno-influenced song by Frou Frou, it is able to inspire the way no hyper-cut MTV music video ever could. Exhibit B: The trailer for "Sin City". Black and white with splashes of color, Jessica Alba's crotch and lines like "...sometimes that means killing a helluva lot of people" mix into a lollipop of cinematic awesome.
Recently, more and more focus has come upon the little brother of the trailer, the teaser. A teaser is like looking at the photos in Maxim; they look great but don't actually show you anything. For example, footage likely shot by a second unit director is the teaser for "War of the Worlds." Beware the teaser, because even more than the trailer, it can mislead you into wanting to see a film. The "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" teaser was an excellent mix of a fake commercial and videogame references, while the trailer correctly shows the film as a cinematic sip of post-toothpaste orange juice.
Even after all this trailer-talk (urge to make white trash joke successfully resisted), there is still one more thing you must do for homework: Watch "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" trailer three (apple.com/trailers) for further trailer examination. Extra Credit: Find the best trailer of all time. I'll give you a hint: http://movies.yahoo.com/ and search for "Comedian." Class dismissed.
