Trailers, the good, the bad and the ugly
There's no doubt that trailers and teasers are an effective medium for selling tickets. They have over ninety minutes of footage to chose from to make a few minutes of exciting and intriguing teaser that will hook the viewer into the story. The audience get to see and hear the completed product that they will be buying into, so it's immediately much more effective than any other marketing form out there, posters, ad campaigns, interviews, personal appearances, and so on. Not only that but they can be exciting, intriguing, and show the very best few minutes of the entire film, how can that not be the best and easiest marketing tool? How can they not fail to capture your imagination and get you into that cinema queue?
Yet so often it fails, they don't engage the viewer and fail to hook them into the film. I'm sure you've seen a trailer that just doesn't excite you, where there's no interest in the characters or the story, or it simply just falls on clichés and a stock voice over, and a poor trailer can so easily kill a film.
When it works though, when they have captured the best moments and pulled it together in a great sequence, created the excitement and the hook to grab your attention, get you thinking, and make you sit back and say "wow". It can make a film; it can create a buzz and hype better than any other piece of marketing.
It's interesting to think of a trailer like The Guardian or The Good Shepherd, they tick all the boxes and have all the elements, but they just don't have that wow factor. Then there's something like The Departed that has managed to turn my feelings round about the film. At first I was concerned about the Hollywood remake, and then I saw the trailer and was so surprised, it had me.
Trailers such as Batman, Spiderman, Superman and Lord of the Rings are fantastic because they have the content to work with and the hype already there, but are they actually good trailers or are they just taking advantage of the huge action sequences and pre-existing hype?
In those cases great trailers have led to great films, but that can so often be the exact opposite. Trailers that really succeed in blowing you away can often lead to such poor films and can be a complete disappointment, possibly even just plainly misleading. The opposite is also true, bad trailers can often be hiding a really good film and sometimes it's just impossible to tell.
There's also a big problem with trailers and teasers, ones that have totally destroyed the movie going experience for you by giving away far too much. You can sometimes only tell when you're actually watching the film and realise you know the answer to twist that's about to happen because of a scene in the trailer. Those are the ones I hate the most. Have you had your movie experience ruined by a trailer, which one was it?
What do you think makes a good trailer? What makes it effective in grabbing the audience? What are the best examples of trailers, and what do you think are the worst? Is there a trailer right now that's got you totally hooked? - I would definitely say Flags of our Fathers or The Fountain.
What about examples where you've seen a superb trailer and watched the film just to be thoroughly disappointed? I'm actually struggling to think of one, could Snakes on a Plane be in there, or Miami Vice? Then there's really bad trailers that have turned out to be really great films, I am guessing you could put Snakes on a Plane right back in here, or for something a bit further back, what about The Blair Witch Project or The Village?
Promotion