What Has Happened To Trailers?
Tuesday, 21 January 2014 13:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsTrailers are those teasers trying to make us watch a movie, or in promo form, an episode of a TV show. For most of my life, a trailer was heralded by a green placard saying that this was approved for all audiences -- unless it had a red screen, meaning even the trailer was restricted.
In the golden era of film, the 30s through the 50s, trailers threw Thrilling Headlines! Grand Vistas! Your Favorite Actresses In Close-up Through Gause Filters! Everything was BIG. And then we had the In A World Where We Have Big Trailers... parodied most effectively in The Holiday with Cameron Diaz's track. (She's a trailer producer.)
Now there are new forms. In the first two movies we've seen in 2014, Her and August: Osage County, the wording changed. Something like This Preview Has Been Approved For Showing With This Feature. Well, okay. We've long known that trailers tend to be spliced in based on the expected audience for the feature movie. But the wording continues: By the MPAA. Really? The same geniuses who decide that brutalization, murder and some topless misogyny is okay, but get upset at too many F-bombs or real adult relationships or heaven forbid a penis, is deciding which trailers can be shown at which movie? Maybe I'm just missing a punctuation mark, rather than reading more into this than there is.
Then there was the TV ad on Sunday for the sequel 300: Rise Of An Empire advertising that a New Trailer would be out on Monday 1/20/2014. Really? I guess trailers themselves have become the story, especially with YouTube and other online sources. And why Monday January 20th? I guess 'cause they figured millions of teens might be home not observing MLK Day, but spending all day surfing the Web and needing new content to buzz.
Kind of like finding out there are trailers for the Super Bowl ads in two weeks floating about. Trailers. For. Super Bowl. Ads. -- Really? Can't build up anticipation for Super Bowl ads without leaking them onto the Internet?
I do note that Winter's Tale has a new trailer on TV which emphasizes the fantasy element more -- Russell Crowe calling on The Devil? As much as I hate trailers which reveal all the good parts, I hate WTF trailers where you don't know what is going on, and not in a good way, more.
Dr. Phil
In the golden era of film, the 30s through the 50s, trailers threw Thrilling Headlines! Grand Vistas! Your Favorite Actresses In Close-up Through Gause Filters! Everything was BIG. And then we had the In A World Where We Have Big Trailers... parodied most effectively in The Holiday with Cameron Diaz's track. (She's a trailer producer.)
Now there are new forms. In the first two movies we've seen in 2014, Her and August: Osage County, the wording changed. Something like This Preview Has Been Approved For Showing With This Feature. Well, okay. We've long known that trailers tend to be spliced in based on the expected audience for the feature movie. But the wording continues: By the MPAA. Really? The same geniuses who decide that brutalization, murder and some topless misogyny is okay, but get upset at too many F-bombs or real adult relationships or heaven forbid a penis, is deciding which trailers can be shown at which movie? Maybe I'm just missing a punctuation mark, rather than reading more into this than there is.
Then there was the TV ad on Sunday for the sequel 300: Rise Of An Empire advertising that a New Trailer would be out on Monday 1/20/2014. Really? I guess trailers themselves have become the story, especially with YouTube and other online sources. And why Monday January 20th? I guess 'cause they figured millions of teens might be home not observing MLK Day, but spending all day surfing the Web and needing new content to buzz.
Kind of like finding out there are trailers for the Super Bowl ads in two weeks floating about. Trailers. For. Super Bowl. Ads. -- Really? Can't build up anticipation for Super Bowl ads without leaking them onto the Internet?
I do note that Winter's Tale has a new trailer on TV which emphasizes the fantasy element more -- Russell Crowe calling on The Devil? As much as I hate trailers which reveal all the good parts, I hate WTF trailers where you don't know what is going on, and not in a good way, more.
Dr. Phil
