I would like to declare a brief moment of silence for The Trailer Hitch. This was a weekly feature here on CraveOnline wherein William “Bibbs” Bibbiani and I give the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment to recent movie trailers; that is to say, we crack wise at their expense in real time. The show was a fun little aside for your work morning, and perfectly suited to people (like anyone) with short attention spans. The 16 episodes to date are still on the site but, sadly, as of this article, the show will be no more. I guess our ill treatment of high-profile movie previews will have to live on in our hearts. You’ll find, though, that making fun of previews is a perfectly safe practice (no one's feelings will be hurt), as few people actually seem to love movie previews. The people who are hired to make them are never the same people who have made the film being advertised, so they have nothing at stake, and the film moguls who ask that such advertisements be made rarely care what goes into them. It's only weirdo purists like me, who like to be in the theater when the lights go down, who seem to take genuine pleasure from the 10-to-20-minute preview period before movies.
Have you noticed, though, that many, many movie previews these days seem to show too much vital plot information right in the preview? Some will even give away crucial plot twists that would only work had they been a surprise to audiences. Roger Ebert has famously called this the Cheese Sample approach to movie trailer making; a grocery store cheese sample on a toothpick will tell you everything you need to know about that cheese. You only buy the whole cheese to get the experience of eating more of it. Same with movie trailers. Many studios feel they should give you the entire plot of the film, and that you'll pay to merely get more of it. Many audiences, of course, object to this approach. However predictable most Hollywood releases may be these days, audiences would prefer that the surprises stay at least mildly surprising. Watch the preview for the recent (rather awful) Daniel Craig haunted house thriller Dream House. You'll know the big twist.
Seriously. They give it all away. Now I did see Dream House, and there was an additional mystery not seen in the preview, but the big twist was clearly the one you see in the preview. Advertisers, essentially, ruined the movie. Same deal with the recent weepie Last Chance Harvey. After watching the preview, is there anything you can't tell me about the film?
Greetings, film fans, to another installment of CraveOnline's Free Film School, wherein I, Professor Witney Seibold (with a degree in rambling), will be walking you through the vast and varied world of movie previews, and how advertising has come to dominate the way we think about movies. Previews are, after all, the primary way most of us learn about upcoming films. The way they are made, and the way they are used, can most certainly warrant a look. Call up some of your favorite movie previews, and let's get started.
First of all, why are previews so often called “trailers?” I will likely be using the two terms interchangeably throughout this article. Even though they've always been called “previews,” the term “trailer” harkens back to the times when theaters would usually show double features. The bulk of film advertising would be done after the “A”-feature, trailing behind. Hence the name. In the MPAA-sanctioned green banners you see before movies today, the word “preview” is still used. Usually it's the industry people who call them trailers. Both names are correct.
The central question on how to make previews seems to be this: How much information should you give? You do, after all, want to inform your audiences of what's going to happen in the film. You're going to want to give them a certain tone and certain visuals to let them know what they're going to be seeing when they eventually go to see it. You definitely want to let them know if there are any recognizable characters or actors involved, and the best way to do that is to show them on screen giving a quick and easy-to-absorb line of dialogue. But at the same time, you don't want to over-inform. Maybe a vague gist of the story would be appropriate, and a description of the setup would be nice (especially if it's a fantasy film with its own rules), but an actual explicit plot description may be too much. It's a delicate balance that seems surprisingly hard to strike. Studios, sadly, tend to err on the side of over-informing, trying to get audiences into a frothing frenzy of excitement for an upcoming film, not caring what they think about said film afterwards.
I would prefer to err to the side of not showing enough. This may just because I live in Los Angeles, and the film industry has a ubiquity here that can't be matched in any other big city, but I feel that information on film can be found if you seek it. A preview may give you a little taste, but if you need more, there are trade papers, movie reviews, and hundreds of film news websites in the world (including the one you're reading right now) that will be more than happy to share what they know about an upcoming film. I love seeing previews. If I need more information, I can choose to find it. Increasingly, I'm finding that films are more exciting the less I know about them beforehand. A single preview will whet my appetite enough. TV spots, product tie-ins and glorified press junkets little hold my attention.
