You have just sat through dancing M&M's, confused car owners desperately looking for insurance and a pseudo self-ironic treatment of Hollywood mentality brought to you by a major mobile phone company, when, lo and behold, the lights are dimming and the green mysterious glowing of the screen authorization comes up. What can I say? It's a fresh feeling, like a newborn just opening its eyes, like the morning dew on rose petals, like the opening of the take-away box on a hangover: everything is possible, you're in sync with the world: the trailers are about to start.
It's one of life's better moments, but, alas, so easily spoiled by the blue shimmering light in the corner of your eye, caused by the pre-adolescent with a Blackberry right next to you, the rustling, and smell for that matter, of the once-a-month movie-goer who is just about to indulge in what looks like something that has already been eaten before, but is actually sold as nachos with cheese sauce, or the giggling of the thirty-something 'girls', one of them just having to relate last night's amorous endeavours with a skiing instructor named Hans!
There seems to be a rumour about a strange people which sees trailers as an extension of the advertisement before the film. A people that cannot understand the almost carnal pleasures of watching those short, self-contained masterpieces, those cinematic appetizers that leave you hankering for more. For too long have these people hidden in our midst and it is about time that someone speaks out: 'In a world, in which one ordinary film reviewer...'
Naturally, the very nature of trailers is a cynic one, the manipulation is perhaps most apparent in the music accompanying the trailers; as often the film itself is not even finished by the time the first teaser trailer comes out, the trailer houses are forced to look elsewhere for the musical score. Producers then have a look at what musical scores proved successful in the past. If, for example, they want the feature to remind the audience of a Tim Burton film, they will choose a slightly changed version of a Danny Elfman score. If they want the trailer to have an epic atmosphere, chances are, the audience will hear some kind of Carmina Burana interpretation. Just pay attention to how often you have heard an altered version of the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack and you will get an idea of the film business' very own brand of recycling.
Also, trailer producers know that, even tough generally one should never give away the ending in a trailer, a certain target audience, one that enjoys rom-coms, for example, might enjoy knowing that the feature advertised will have a happy ending, a fact which will then influence this particular audience to buy a ticket. Trailers are about salesmanship and persuasion techniques, nevertheless, the motive does not necessarily have to spoil the pleasure:
Due to the MPAA regulations, trailers should never be longer than two-and-a-half minutes, which generally does not give the producers a lot of leeway, it does, however, mean that trailers are altogether extremely tightly edited, as every second counts, they tend to be narrative miracles as they have to condense the plot into an exceedingly tight time frame and the they have the possibility of editing out corny lines, cheap jokes or just plain old bad acting. Trailers are the films you are wanting to see, not the films you will see.
In the forties trailers would be merely created to contain information about the upcoming feature. Alfred Hitchcock himself would stand on the film set, not caring about any such principle as disrupting the cinematic illusion and quite happily relate the events of his upcoming thriller. The trailer for The Big Sleep even has Humphrey Bogart walk into a bookshop with Lauren Bacall as a shop-assistant recommending the Raymond Chandler novel the film is based upon. Later, foremost in the seventies, the teaser was born, little snippets of the film, not giving away anything of the plot, but conveying a mood, catching the atmosphere of the film, most famous example being The Shining teaser in which we see but the elevator doors opening and blood pouring out.
The modern trailer tricks you into wanting to see a film, they come to represent a marketed means of nurturing the short attention span of a modern audience. In a hyperbolic treatment of a film's scenario lies the crux of the matter: When we think of film, we mostly think of highly dramatised series of events, the editing in trailers is designed to mirror the audience's heartbeat, the fast pace of an action thriller,for example, therefore will literally get your heart pumping. Granted that these are all manipulations of your viewing habits, but they also represent a form of condensed essentialism which will instil every minor event with a significance most individuals long for in their day-to-day.
This reviewer will, naturally, conduct extensive research of an anthropological nature before starting an article. So, in preparation for this scientifically incredibly valuable subject of audience behaviour in trailer-viewing situations, this reviewer walked down the street with her I-Pod playing first John Williams musical scores and later the Yann Thiersen soundtrack for Amélie Poulin. Walking past the bus stop with Williams' compositions blasting in my headphones, all of a sudden, the old man reaching into his pocket becomes a potential threat, my surroundings seem move in slow motion as the man, with a mad glint in his bloodshot eyes, slowly retrieves....his wallet and gets his bus fare out. Switching the music to Amélie then, the same man suddenly looks wistfully gleeful, a bit like the farmer in Babe, secretly chuckling about the many wonderful absurdities of life. Switch the I-Pod off, and the man is just a man, carrying a bag of pork scratchings and a 2-litre bottle of White Lightning in a blue corner-shop bag.
Modern individuals seem to long for some kind of grandeur in their dealings with the world. It is this grandeur which cinema provides, most condensed in its form of trailers. It comes as no surprise that most trailers start with 'In a world..', not in the world, or in our world. Trailers bring us a two-and-a-half minute condensation of a world in which everything is significantly more relevant and every action has a consequence which will prove life-changing. And let's face it, in a world where absolutely nothing happens when you pop to Tesco's for a half pint of milk, a bit of excitement wouldn't go amiss. If we could but all live : 'In a world...'
No comments:
Post a Comment