The Hyperion Chronicles

I was going to wait on Part III until next week, but after reading many of your responses, I felt the need to talk about Movie Previews. I have included a copy of a letter I wrote to all the heads of major studios awhile back. A little background information first:

Movie Trailers (or Previews) are what you see before a movie starts. The reason they are called trailers is that in the old days they used to come after the movie, and were considered part of the movie. There are two types of Trailers; the normal-length one (about two minutes), and “teasers.” The difference is that teasers are shown many months before a film comes out—often before it’s finished shooting—and is just a quick little bite.


Other interesting facts: many of you have asked about seeing scenes in movie previews that aren’t in the real movies. This happens because often the trailer is made of the raw footage that hasn’t been edited down yet into the final movie. Also, most movie scores are not added until the picture is completed, so many previews borrow other movies’ music that they don’t end up using. Everything else you need to know is in my letter.

To: Movie Executives

Dear Sirs, Madams, and other carbon-based life forms:

I write to offer you my help. I have an online column and have been writing about movies, but I realized that as my organization has ethical standards, no movie executive would ever be on the mailing list. I want to talk to you people about trailers. They’ve got to be better. It’s a crisis, and it’s worse than you think.

There are two main problems. One is when you do your job too well, like the Godzilla preview. That trailer created suspense; by not showing the monster at all in the preview. People were standing up and cheering in the theatre—for a preview!—and one guy even composed a love sonnet to the big green scaly one itself. (Granted, the man did have a 5th of Thunderbird in him, but you get the point)

Then the movie came out. I personally bought 25 tickets for that special Tuesday-at-midnight premiere, and we shut down one whole section of the Atlanta Airport to go to this movie. Excitement was high. There were even prize packs given out to those midnight customers. Everyone was primed.

Then the movie started.

It is rare for me to say this, but not even gratuitous nudity could have improved this movie; and that’s saying something. Not only were we rooting for Godzilla to eat Matthew Broderick and his friends, but we were hoping Broderick’s woman would serially cheat on him; possibly even with ‘Zilla. You see, the movie executives did their job by getting people to see the movie, but when a movie is worse-than-Hitler bad, it breeds ill will from the consumer.

The much bigger mistake, though, is one that is made all too commonly. This is when you have a decent movie and don’t know how to make a good trailer for it. I think I understand the problem. The trailers are usually made by executives (of whom most of you have sold your soul), and by marketing experts (who would have sold their soul, but couldn’t get a “focus group” to endorse the idea). You want to bring in the biggest demographic, so you “Ricki-Lake” it and appeal to the lowest common denominator. Movie audiences are smarter than you think, and they want a preview that will entice them.

The secret here is to get the people who make the movies—i.e. the directors—to help you with the trailer. They know about the soul of a movie, and can give you the most bang for your buck. You’ll notice that when the directors are involved the trailers are better. Have you ever seen a bad Spielberg preview? What about those Matrix trailers? Blew you away, didn’t they? Then there is the master of Previews: George Lucas.

My friend Koz and I went and sat through Meet Joe Black—a fine movie, but one that lasted longer than the Harrison presidential administration—not because we have secret crushes on Brad Pitt, but because both before and after Meet Joe Black they were playing the first ever trailer to Star Wars Episode I. This trailer was so awe-inspiring they made a music video out of it! Now; audiences had been waiting a long time for Star Wars, so they might have sat through anything, and I’m not saying you’re going to be able to do this with every movie to come down the pike. But you can create excitement by making a good trailer; one that gets people talking. As much as I hated Godzilla, I’d rather be excited about a movie that ends up not being good than never seeing a good movie because the previews were so boring.

This brings me to my last point about trailers, Movie Execs and Marketing Weasels; one that is sure to seem anathema to you. I realize that in your business, market share is everything and you always want more, more, more. But in previews, most of the time less is more. I can’t tell you how many decent movies I—and many other people—might have been willing to see if the whole plot wasn’t given away in the two minute trailer.

You need to learn from the people who made the Legends of the Fall trailer, a mastery of minimalism that contained no words—just beautifully suspenseful music—while cutting shots that lasted two or three seconds at most all together in kaleidoscope fashion. Now, that was a preview. More recently, the master has been M. Night Shyamalan. Anyone who saw the preview to The 6th Sense had no idea what that movie was about. They didn’t need to. All they knew was that it looked spooky and interesting, and the film made almost 300 million dollars domestically.

Apart from a few Internet Geeks, audiences like to be surprised when they see a movie. When I see a trailer, I don’t want to see a thirty second cut from the climactic scene! You see, soulless movie people, you don’t have to reveal everything. Pretend your preview is a pretty girl. Make the audience wonder what’s underneath it all without showing them everything for free. There are ways to do this, too. One way is to avoid showing anything from the second half of the film. If you must show bits and pieces, keep the shot under two seconds, so the audience doesn’t have a chance to piece it all together before they’ve seen the movie.

If you will do some of these things—letting directors have creative input in trailers and stop trying to show all your cards up front—you will have happier audiences and more total revenue. Surely even you spawns of the devil can understand that.

Sincerely,

John Q. Public

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Make sure you catch the next movie column, where we go deeper into the whole theatre experience and answer the question that has plagued mankind for years; what are the best make out movies?

Until then,


Hyperion
June 03, 2003

Credits
Thanks to Koz and Laureate for all the research help
Thanks to Lion-O for the inspiration
Thanks to movie executives for being good sports
Special thanks to Laureate for help editing

For More Information
Check out a great website about Trailers here, or go to the Internet Movie Data Base and type in your favorite movie.

@2003 the Hyperion Chronicles