As part of the release of
Death Proof/Planet Terror several fake trailers were made and shown in cinemas during the film's screening including the brilliant
Don’t made by Edgar Wright and the fake trailer for
Machete (which was subsequently made into a real feature film by Rodriguez). The fake trailers scuttled across the World Wide Web like so many bloodied, disemboweled spiders, spreading hype and publicity for the highly anticipated films. As a part of this publicity campaign, a competition was held for fans to make their own fake Grindhouse trailers, the winner of which,
Hobo with a Shotgun was aired in cinemas in Canada during screenings of
Death Proof/Planet Terror, and subsequently went on to be produced as an actual feature film.
Trailers have always been an integral part of a marketing campaign for a film release, and the production of a trailer has always been an art in itself. A bad trailer can kill a film release. Too formulaic and we yawn, bad jokes and we become suspicious, too little information and the potential audience is numbed into apathy, or worse, too much information and we feel as if we’ve already seen it and there’s no need to spend a further two hours on the feature. In the past, a successful trailer, a poster or two and a few interviews on the telly with the stars or director was enough to create the hype needed to sell tickets, but this approach will no longer do. Publicity campaigns of late have become incredibly sophisticated.
Today, we expect to see teaser campaigns, viral videos, and a trailer on the internet months before the release. These days a distributer comes across down-right lazy unless several internet trailers have been released and some kind of prolific internet meme has been born (imagine how huge Sad Keanu The Movie would be right now).
Now more than ever, trailers are becoming a highly sophisticated art form, and consequently trailer producers are innovating and pushing the boundaries of their craft.
The recent
Don’t be afraid of the Dark trailer, wet many a seat here at The Vine. Unlike a traditional trailer it contained very little footage of the actual film but created an experience in itself for the viewer that was like an intensified prelude to the actual film, complete with a very distinct three-act structure. The trailer must have been developed for two kinds of markets- those sitting in a dark cinema, and the many of us who sit in darkened rooms at night squaring up our eyes with hours of isolated internet absorption (it should be noted that I watched this trailer in my office in the day time and I still had a mini freakout).
Other trailers push the boundaries in a less successful way. The trailer for the French film Mademoiselle Chambon which came out in Australia earlier this year, lured audiences with a painful minute and 19 seconds of the two lead characters sitting wordlessly on a bed. While the trailer did outline the tone of the film accurately, and created some intrigue, the trailer simply didn’t give enough information and had a rather alienating effect (although it’s highly likely French speakers may have derived a little more information from the lyrics to the song played throughout. The Singer didn’t mention ‘croissants’ or the ‘Arc de Triomphe’ so I was entirely lost).
With innovation in trailer production comes a different breed of trailer consumers. A few years ago the brilliant craze of
‘re-trailers’ swept
Youtube. This clearly illustrated how au fait we all are with watching a trailer and thinking beyond a trailer’s contents. The trailer is so prolific and at such a forefront in the media consumer’s mind that publicity merchants for other media types have adopted the trailer as a marketing tool.
The infamous Quirk Books literary mashups, given as novelty Christmas presents the world over for some years now; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and Android Karenina, are all accompanied by viral Youtube campaigns. The trailers, distinctly movie-like, are fun and appeal to an audience who feel closer to zombie movies than they do classic fiction.
Likewise, the approaching release of the second album for Nick Cave’s new band
Grinderman has also been promoted through a series of trailers, directed by renowned Australian film director
John Hillcoat. Neither of these non-movie trailers actually contain any significant amounts of the product they are advertising, but it remains the case that specific product or story is no longer what an audience is looking for when engaging with a trailer. We want tone, images, ideas, hype, the vibe, Mabo.