(W)hatever(T)unes(F)ilms: Thoughts: On Trailers Pt. I

WTF?

WTF indeed! We stand for Films, Tunes, and Whatever else we feel like (not necessarily in order!) Professor Nonsense heads the 'Whatever' department, posting ramblings ranging from the decrepit, to the offbeat, to the just plain absurd! The mysterious Randor takes helm of the 'Tunes' front, detailing the various melodic messages he gets in earfuls. Weekly recommendations and various musings follow his shadows. Finally, our veteran movie critic, Lt Archie Hicox, commands the 'Film' battlefield, giving war-weathered reviews on flicks the way he sees them. Through the eyes of a well-versed renegade, he stands down for no man! Together we are (W)hatever(T)unes(F)ilms!

Feel free to comment with your ideas, qualms, and responses, or e-mail them to RandorWTF@Hotmail.com!

Oct 11, 2011

Thoughts: On Trailers Pt. I - The Power of Enigma

I’m sure you’ve all heard variations of the same old quip, always delivered with a delicious slice of sarcasm just as the house lights go down and the trailers come up; someone whispers, “This is my favorite part of the movie.”

But who can blame them for their cynicism? The fifteen-odd minutes of advertisements notwithstanding, the overall quality of American movies in recent years has been…how shall we say…less than spectacular?

Especially tricky is finding a way to keep a disinterested audience interested.

Ask anyone in marketing and they’ll tell you that advertising has always been a curious thing. Not quite an exact science. Not quite an art. If you happen to do it wrong the audience might still see your movie but they’ll come to expect something so sorely out of place with their expectations that disappointment is the only possible result.

These days, the safe bet lies in star vehicles and FX-driven bravado. Lambasting us with eye-popping visuals, information over-load and fast cuts; we’re all familiar with this type of sales pitch.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Back in the early days of movie advertising, studios actually had to rent out the trailers and other promotional material for their films—specially-cut and spliced together—from contracted individuals who worked outside the industry.

It took decades before the true potential of trailer-making was realized. Until recent decades, trailers were often riddled with grandiosity and transparent boasts. It took ad men, many with no experience in traditional narrative editing, and a few acknowledged pioneers like Stanley Kubrick or Federico Fellini to revolutionize the way in which the public discovered new films in the 1960s and 70s.

Abandoning the overkill tactics of yore and simply allowing films to speak for themselves, editors began employing radical new techniques with which they could deliver a film. Using non-linear and occasionally nonsensical devices that didn’t necessarily cater to rational impulses but rather more visceral, emotional ones, the idea was (and often still is) to retain the overall feel of a movie without sacrificing the gist.

Whether you love em or hate em at the beginnings of your movies (they actually used to show up at the end of a film, hence the moniker ‘trail-er’), they are certainly an established element of our cultural media that is here to stay.

And whether they are misleading or not, the brief glimpses trailers offer are key in shaping our curiosities. The following sampler are some notable ones I’ve hand-picked for their style, each one a potent feast for the mind’s eye. Each one locked in it's own time. Each one proving that you don’t really have to know what a movie's all about to want to see it.