A few days ago, I wrote that the Carol trailer is a Feeling Trailer. In other words, a collage of individual, non-sequential shots—jumping from one scene to the next.
This is the polar opposite of the growing number of trailers that focus much of their attention on a single scene, as I discussed in my write-up for the Black Mass trailer. These One-Scene Trailers provide viewers with dozens—even a hundred—sequential shots and unbroken pages of dialogue.
What’s fascinating, though, is that despite the stark contrast between these two extreme forms of trailers, they actually share the same goal. The goal of both the Feeling Trailer and the One-Scene Trailer is to give viewers a sense of the tone that they can expect from the underlying film. Note that this goal is distinct from the typical trailer’s goal of establishing the underlying film’s story.
So, I suppose the bottom line is that when a trailer’s focus is either extremely broad or extremely narrow, the major thing that the viewer is able to take away from it is the underlying film’s core tone.
The music makes this trailer. It perfectly evokes a small, private warmth within a cold winter night in the city, circa 1940 – 1960. And, in fact, that is exactly the feeling that Carol seems to be trying to capture.
I don’t use the word “feeling” by accident: this is a Feeling Trailer. In other words, it tells us very little about its film’s story and instead focuses on conjuring tone, setting, and emotion. This is a not typically a successful strategy for a trailer, but I think it works here for three reasons. First, the viewer is able to grasp the gist of the story quickly because it appears to be relatively simple. Second, the setting of the story is so beautiful as to be compelling in itself. And, third, the repressive, conformist setting is part of the story, so in slowly exploring the place the trailer is actually telling part of its story.
As a side note, Todd Haynes also directed the seemingly-very-similar (and fantastic) Far from Heaven. That fact suggests to me that Carol must contain far more than appears in this trailer.
From the acting to the music to the lighting to the set design to the story—everything about Brooklyn feels like a classic. Perhaps because this trailer is so simple and standard, I don’t have much to say about the trailer itself. As long as it didn’t give away too much of the movie’s story, I think it does a solid job of presenting what appears to be a great film.
Few facts about a movie can lower my expectations more than an August release date and a Margot Robbie starring role. So I was surprised by how sophisticated and classy Z for Zachariah appears to be.
What I find most intriguing about this trailer is the manner in which it transcends its post-apocalyptic setting and instead conjures nineteenth-century American Reconstruction. In other words, the trailer is reminiscent in both setting and theme to Cold Mountain, and, I’m sure, to a slew of novels that I’ve not yet read. (It also reminds me of the Appalachian style of the Hunger Games—but that thematic allusion both is more direct and appears to be less substantive.) The question that I’m interested in considering is: how does the Z for Zachariah trailer manage to do that using an economy of signals?
Most obviously, the accents conjure in my mind the Civil War. By no means do I think that’s true of all Southern accents. Here, though, there’s something antiquated, for example, about the way that Chiwetel Ejiofor pronounces “figure it out” at 2:00. Also, I can’t say for sure without having seen the film, but it seems that the film evokes nineteenth-century themes in its treatment of race. The name “Caleb” at 1:38 also recalls the popularity of biblical names during the late nineteenth century. Lastly, the scenery around :58 makes me think of the Old South.
The next question to answer is: why? Why does this post-Apocalyptic film want to ground itself in the past? Perhaps the idea is that the contours of human relationships are timeless. And any film interested in that sort of issues is okay by me.
I love the music. I love the sun-drenched cinematography. I love the amount of care that went into the editing. I love the Millennial-generation themes.
I like the Fight Club-style narration and camera movements. And I actually like Zac Efron, too.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a “cool factor” that the best trailers possess — this trailer is the definition of cool. But it also conveys some substance, and the underlying film seems to at least attempt to achieve an understanding of the state of the world (and the psyche of young people) at this exact moment in time. In that sense, the film seems reminiscent of The Social Network.
One quick note on the mechanics of the trailer: it’s a rare trailer that is significantly longer than two minutes and thirty seconds. The only other one that I can recall right now is Avatar. The self-indulgence inherent to choosing an extended run-time may be a warning sign. And I do worry that We Are Your Friends’ style may overwhelm its substance. At the end of the day, though, this trailer clearly just wanted to be cool — it achieved its goal.
I’m sort of cheating. Immediately after watching this trailer, and before solidifying my opinion, I saw that this film is getting some absolutely amazing early reviews (“destined to . . . endure as a touchstone for its generation” type reviews).
I may now be biased, but I do think this is a pretty good trailer. Interestingly, my impressions of the trailer seem to mirror some of the reviews: at first, the movie appears to be a standard entry into the sad-coming-of-age genre, packaged with relatively clever dialogue. But then things take a turn at 1:50, and immense depths are displayed over the next 40 seconds. At 2:19, in particular, it’s clear that the film has dug into emotional truths.
As I read over what I’ve just written, I’m realizing that it’s not a coincidence that my previous two sentences contain analogies to mining: I think that most dramatic art attempts to permeate deep into real human emotions, and most works get stuck somewhere closer to the surface. Based on this film’s early reviews and this trailer, I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie really has struck something special.
This has been one of the biggest weeks for trailers that I can remember. And the Black Mass trailer, which came out of left field, is at the top of a very impressive heap.
A trailer style that has becomeincreasinglycommon is to use the trailer to showcase one specific scene from the underlying film, thus giving the viewers a sense of the film’s pace and editing. This strategy serves as a sort of signal that the creators of the film are so confident in their material that they don’t even need to bother with specially crafting an enticing trailer. Here, I think that decision paid off.
But what I love most about this trailer is that it layers a huge variety of images on top of its focal scene. Viewers begin to sense the larger scope of the film. On a similar note, even Johnny Depp’s brief mention of “Alcatraz” also serves convey that film will deal with the broader historical context of its immediate storyline. My favorite moment from the trailer occurs at :49, when Johnny Depp says “no.”
We hear a foreboding drumbeat and the action pauses for over a second as the viewer slowly begins to comprehend the severity of what just occurred. From there, the tension only builds.
One of the most exciting things about watching the teaser for a long-anticipated movie for the first time is learning what the movie will look like.
This teaser establishes that Batman v Superman—unexpectedly—sets out to explore deep themes about power, heroes, and human nature—themes that have been heretofore absent from comic book movies. The smart narration in this teaser suggests the movie may even have the intellectual heft to do justice to these ideas.
But, even still, I am having a hard time getting over the fact that I just don’t like the way this movie looks. Zack Snyder seems to be a one-trick pony: 300 and Sucker Punch showcased the same claustrophobic visual scheme. Darkness. A slight soft focus. Completely CG sets. Snyder’s style prevents me from ever feeling fully immersed in the worlds that he tries to create. It’s difficult to feel immersed in a cheap-looking video game.
So, ultimately, I’m disappointed in what this teaser revealed about its film.
Wow! THIS is a teaser! In the teaser’s amazing opening shot (with its perfectly mood-setting score), the camera begins panning over a familiar Tatooine (or not). But as the camera continues panning, the revelation that the mountain in the background is actually a demolished star destroyer clarifies that we’re seeing something completely new.
The brief description of the Skywalker genealogy likewise serves as ideal shorthand about the general plot. I particularly like the usage of the second-person when Luke Skywalker describes the newest generation — it makes the viewer feel included in the story.
By no means am I a die-hard Star Wars fan, but the last scene in this teaser conjured in me a level of excitement for a big blockbuster that I haven’t felt in a long time.
I am shocked by the weirdness of this mainstream studio film. On the one hand, I instinctively stand behind any attempt to break the restrictive mold to which big budget movies are increasingly required to conform. On the other, I am put off by just how weird Mad Max: Fury Road appears to be.
More to the point, I think this trailer provides an interesting lens through which to consider the question of whether or not one’s assessment of a trailer depends on one’s interest in the underlying film. Can an unappealing film have a good trailer?
When watching the Fury Road trailer, viewers immediately notice how odd the film’s costume design is. Even more jarring, however, is the film’s editing. Notice the increased speed and quick cuts at 1:07 that create a sense of frantic discomfort. This speed of movement evokes Terry Gilliam—Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, and The Zero Theorem all come to mind—and seems to be the film’s signature style.
As a reviewer, I don’t think it’s fair for me to say that the uncomfortable style and disturbing subject matter throughout the trailer make me personally disinterested in seeing the film. But I think it is fair to say that I find it problematic that the uncomfortable style and disturbing subject matter don’t appear to contribute to any higher-level artistic end. Instead, it all just seems disturbing for the sake of being disturbing.
At exactly 1:30, however, something surprising happens: the trailer slows to a less frantic pace and, for the first time, it says something interesting. If I just listen to the voice-over here, I start to think that maybe Mad Max: Fury Road has some depth, after all. At the very least, I start to think that maybe the latter half of this trailer is pretty good, even if the film itself is still off-putting.
But I just can’t shake my sense that this portion of the trailer doesn’t fairly convey the film that it is supposed to represent. I may be proven wrong when Mad Max is released, but my guess is that this voice-over is taken from a prologue or epilogue that is deeper than the rest of the film warrants.
In other words, I have a hunch that the positive aspects of this trailer lack fidelity to the underlying film, and this concern keeps me from feeling fully immersed in the trailer. My ultimate answer to the question of whether an unappealing film can produce a good trailer is “no”: I don’t think a trailer can be good unless it at least appears to fairly represent its film—and it may be impossible for the trailer of an unappealing film to simultaneously be good a good trailer and be faithful to its film.
Movie Trailer Central 