The Muffin Zoetrope

THE FALL OF FILM TRAILERS

Film Trailers. Lovely as they can be, I have a bone to pick with them. To start off, I'll have to pay homage to my first experiences at the cinema seeing Trailers at the start of films in the mid-90s: these were amazing times. Often, although you didn't know whether or not the film you were seeing was going to be good, there was the additional pre-show excitement of seeing a bunch of 5 or so Trailers for other upcoming films. Speedily editing, fast cutting with climactic action music and slicing, crunching sound effects, Trailers took the Best Bits out of a film and smooshed them together in a Zoetrope of thrill.

As time went on, Trailers successfully followed this same formula, but it became clearer what the flaws of this flashy promotion were. These trailers often out-shone the films they were promoting, indeed, it was true that ripping all the best scenes out of a movie and showing them off within a couple of minutes essentially meant that when you saw the actual film, you were watching the boring bits in-between the blink-and-you'll-miss-it profound amazement moments. In the 2000s, this flaw reached critical mass when films like 'Open Water' were essentially just a long version of their own trailer.

Not only this, but enigmatic horror films that went by the mantra "the less you show, the more scary it is" hypocritically showed most of their film in 1 teaser trailer, 2 main trailers, a pre-release making-of featurette and 5 TV spots.

 Then there is imagination. There was a furore surrounding the overhyping of the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies before they were released. The Matrix (the original film) shocked audiences by providing them with a slice of its gritty sci-fi world. A world which, we only saw a fraction of, and yet our imaginations were racing... in our minds, those of us that were fans, saw the plot going to a different place (and you could apply this to many other things, the Star Wars prequels for instance). It's amazing what the creativity of our own varied and unique consciousnesses can make up, and when the Trailers for The Matrix 2&3 (Reloaded, and Revolutions) came out, we had basically written the plot in our own heads. ALL the things that SHOULD happen, and that COULD happen, right there, filling the gaps between every shot in the Trailer. We had invented it. But it was not to be, and as majestic in scale as these 2 films were, they could not compete with the much larger visions that a multitude of us, commenting on their Trailers had had.

I will mention music also, for I am a big fan of 'Nine Inch Nails', the punchy Industrial band, which some smart Hollywood exec has heard, and seen fit that it should be 'cathartic Trailer music'. So they pick these, undoubtably cool, and darkly atmospheric tracks, and they put them over movie teasers like '300' and 'Terminator Salvation' - it has the desired affect of making us go "fucking wow, I'm definitely seeing this" (and, don't get me wrong, 300 was a good flick), but after watching the images in the Trail' being scored by NIN, my mind was making the movie out to be 10 times better than it actually was. And also - there's no NIN in the actual movie, which is anticlimactic. (In fact the only place you're likely to find NIN in an actual movie is a sinisterly-edited Tony Scott film.)

On Youtube today (which has stupidly allowed itself to be consumed by advertising, much alike the burden carried by TV programmes), you may start watching the Trailer for a film you want to see, only to find yourself greeted by a pre-Trailer ad-break that selects random advertising to throw in your face before you get to see the Trailer, which is itself, ironically, advertising. Also, I have noticed that sometimes the randomisation that selects an advert to force you to watch before seeing your Trailer of choice, is often, the Trailer for the same film.

Similarly, when sitting in a cinema, the pre-film Trailers (which, unlike in the 90s, now lag behind a 15-minute block of product-placement advertising) turn out to be for the film you are about to see. Isn't it questionable logic to see a Trailer for a Film followed immediately by the Film itself? Are we treating films like food, perhaps, like the supermarket Free-Sample Muffin taster tray, in front of all the rows of on-sale Muffins on the shelf? Is that how we're meant to think of them? If so, what if I'd seen the Muffins on the shelf and said "hey I like the look of those, I'm definitely going to buy some later", only to have the Free-sample Lady trying to force-feed me Muffins while I make my way through the vegetable aisle, shoving muffins down my throat everywhere I go? Don't you think that when I finally get back to the cake aisle, I might not only have lost my appetite for Muffins, and also have felt pretty violated?

DVDs used to be lovely and free from advertising and Trailers when they first came out - you could watch features to do with the film in the menu, and occasionally SELECT trailers of other films to watch if you wanted to. But then DVDs somehow fell prey to the VHS disease, with pre-menu Trailers bunged onto the disc, up in your face, usually unskippable.

I'm waiting for people to get wise about Advertising (and remove it...from life) and one of the branches of that much longed-for ideal consists of getting wise about Trailers.

I want Filmmakers to think a little more like this: look, if you're gonna have a Trailer for your film, make it small, like a one-off Teaser, maximum of 20 seconds, and DON'T give away your plot in the Teaser, in fact, don't put ANY of your best scenes in. Bullet-point your 20 best scenes in your film, and avoid putting any of them in the trailer. 

The next wise advancement beyond that I would petition for, of course, will be to have NO trailers. Can you imagine the joy of going into a Cinema to see a Film? That's not actually what happens right now. You go to a cinema to pay more for sweet things than you would anywhere else, and see adverts of many kinds asking you to spend, including an advert for the Film you're about to see, and then of course, the Film. (Which technically because of Trailers, you already have seen.)  The thing is, the requirement to constantly create new films in general is dying out at the moment, so a lot of this is too little too late. There's simply too much to fix for such an ageing medium, largely replaced by the more flexible storytelling tool of computer games.

Unfortunately, advertising is flourishing, in the same way a swarm of crop-destroying insects flourishes. More on that story later.

-Des