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Russian Trailers #2

30/9/2015

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This Fortnight's Post is brought to you by Ksenia Frolova, Doctoral Candidate at the The University of East Anglia, welcome Ksenia! 
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From Tyutchev’s poetry to Russian trailers: visualising, representing and poetically critiquing Russian life

Who would grasp Russia with the mind?
For her no yardstick was created:
Her soul is of a special kind,
By faith alone appreciated.
(Fyodor Tyutchev, trans. by John Dewey)

Following up from Ed’s blogpost on Russian trailers, locating the Russian Trailer within the existent trailer scholarship, I want to continue the discussion of Russian Trailers, this time offering cultural and social contexts, in which they are created and consumed.

Being a Russian, watching these trailers, the first thought that came to mind was a famous line from a poem written by Fyodor Tyutchev in 1866, but which is still very much relevant, remembered and often quoted by Russians, being a popular maxim: “Умом Россию не понять” or “Who would grasp Russia with the mind?” Moreover, I believe that it is particularly this idea that is behind ALL Russian Trailers, because the footage used in them is from the unimaginable, the insane, yet it comes from video eyewitnesses and is therefore more than real and possible. I would go even further arguing that similar to the political subcontext of Tyutchev’s poetry, Russian Trailers are also highly political in nature; by no means celebratory, as it was suggested by Ed, but on the contrary they are, for me, critical, cynical and ultimately sad. 

What I agree with, however, is Ed’s description of these trailers as the “unique phenomena”, because they do not line up with most of the existent literature on fake and fan trailers or fan creations in a broader sense. They do not “perform and embody users' and fans' desire to see not just the feature film but also the official trailer itself” (Williams, 2012) and there is no sense of fans’ cinematic anticipation or appreciation (Jenkins, 2006). The trailers’ connection to the original film is minimal, as it will be discussed further in this article, with the film being the means, rather than the motivation. This potentially challenges how we understand trailers and cinema, though such discussion goes beyond the scope of this particular blogpost. Russian trailers further distance the concept of a trailer from cinema and advertising; they reflect the importance of the format of a trailer that goes beyond its initial understanding; and require us to re-visit the issues and concepts around trailer, fandom, narrative and interactivity (Johnston, 2008). 

Russian trailers, which currently can only be found on YouTube, have an apparently unique relationship with its online audience. On the one hand, they rely on amateur footage uploaded to YouTube for its montaged content, and on the other hand they are also a major source of discussion and argument among YouTube viewers. The sheer volume of the comments, with some videos receiving 500+ comments, points to the “popularity” of the format. Comment threads for the majority of Russian trailers present a form of a heated argument, with users usually occupying one of two sides: those who find the videos “f#*%ing funny” and celebrate the “maker” of the video and his or her “talent”, and those who are embarrassed by them and can’t understand why someone would film something like this, let alone montage it. The first group of comments is almost impossible to translate due to  the peculiarities of Russian swear words, however, the comments from the other side of the argument are quite interesting in their tone and message, as well as having serious intentions, rather than comic, initiating a deeper discussion of the videos and their meanings.
​One of the first comments to the ‘Interstellar  Russian trailer’ reads as “рашка такая 
рашка”, which can be translated as “Russia is so Russia”. However, instead of using the word “Russia”, the user has chosen a slighting word “Russka”, which is a derogatory slang word derived from the word “Russia”, which Russians use when describing Russia’s problems, and particularly when the media highlights an unfavourable aspect of Russian life. This comment is interesting, as it has set the tone for the following discussion, with many users using the word “Russka” in the following comments. One user commented: “People make the country. Those who live in Russka are ashamed of it, and those who live in Russia are proud of it”, indicating a painful contradiction felt by many Russians, who simultaneously love and hate, are proud and ashamed of their own country and fellow citizens.. Some of the comments are also highly sarcastic, with users writing things like “Glory to the great Russia!” or “This video is very thought provoking… It made me think about how many idiots we have in this country!” 

However, it is not only the comments, but the footage itself that can be seen as offering a social and political critique. Russian trailers appear to address social issues, such as lack of laws and rules or their total disregard, alcoholism, unemployment and underdevelopment of many areas outside big cities and people who occupy them, who lack education, culture and have no work prospects, which often links back to alcoholism, making it a vicious circle of social inequality and injustice. The videos also often address other peculiarities of Russian life, such as extreme weather conditions, for instance, and what people have to do to cope with them, often on their own, with no support from local councils. The images below from the Interstellar - Russian trailer illustrate this further:
Russian trailers are a mash up of footage taken from multiple sources, united and structured by the conventional cinematic trailer format and a dramatic soundtrack, which is always a voiceover borrowed from an official trailer for a specific film (official trailer for the Russian market, where the original English trailer is translated and adopted into Russian). The format of the trailer works very well for such mash up: best bits of amateur footage are montaged in the fast-paced manner, being brought together to tell a story, however, similar to critiques of cinematic trailers, these stories are quite vague, without giving too much away (cf Johnston, 2008).

The choice of films is not accidental either, the voiceover is usually uniquely linked to the theme and tone of the video, helping to develop the narrative and make sense of the onscreen action. To demonstrate this on the example of Interstellar Russian Trailer, the voiceover is the following (in Russian): “We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us”. The connection of the voiceover, which is also a quote from the main character in the film from – Cooper, was strongly felt by some viewers, with one YouTube user saying: “We were proud of Gagarin going to space, the WWII victory, the beauty of our boundless motherland… What is happening, what is all this?” The voiceover thus ties all of the videos together and gives them a meaning; the video can be analysed as posing a rhetorical question of what can Russians be proud of now, when all the accomplishments of the Soviet Union are being left far behind, with only social inequalities, poverty and unruliness remaining in their place. However, the way this question is posed is very subtle, it is hidden behind the seemingly obvious image, and is not apparent to everyone, which makes these ugly videos uniquely poetic.

Works cited:

Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press

Johnston, Keith M. (2008) ‘‘The Coolest Way to Watch Movie Trailers in the World' Trailers in the Digital Age’. Convergence, Vol. 14(2), pp. 145-160

Williams, Kathleen Amy (2012) ‘Fake and fan film trailers as incarnations of audience anticipation and desire’. Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol. 9, available at: http://journal.transformativeworks.com/index.php/twc/article/view/360/284 [Accessed on 21/09/2015]
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Русский трейлер - 'Russian Trailers'

16/9/2015

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This fortnight’s post is very much a work in progress, and comes from Ed's (hopefully) forthcoming conference paper currently under work in collaboration with colleague Ksenia Frolova, at the University of East Anglia.


In this post, though I want to briefly talk about Fan trailers, and the definition of fan trailers. Specifically however, I want to explore as best I can, the emerging phenomena that are, ‘Russian Trailers’. So before I begin, I need a hefty caveat: my Russian language skills are not good, in fact they're almost non-existent and this research is done purely at a theoretical and somewhat superficial level until my Russian speaking colleagues are able to contribute to the project, but not being one to shy away from a challenge here are some thoughts so far.

Identified as ‘Русский трейлер’ or Russian Trailer, these short films are appearing across YouTube and appear to be real world footage edited together to replicate editing and communicative conventions of specific film trailers. 

Titles include:

Интерстеллар : Русский трейлер /Interstellar - Russian trailer

Война миров Z : Русский трейлер / World War Z – Russian trailer    

Tитаник : Русский трейлер/ Titanic - Russian trailer

Across these forms are the conventions of fan made trailers, use of studio logos to set up a trailer, voice overs taken straight from 'authentic' trailers, on some rare occasions even the modifying of footage from the source film. Yet the overwhelming unifying characteristics of these trailers are a titular reference to a movie Titanic, World War Z, etc and the use of themed real world footage to compose the 'trailer'. 

That these trailers appear on YouTube itself can be said to hold most of the traits of the fan made trailer, and indeed as we'll see videosharing is at the heart of these trailers. 


Overall the connections between the trailer and the Russian trailer can be difficult to explain so let me illustrate:
On the left, we have the Official Trailer for Interstellar, on the right, we have the Russian Trailer.

(NB, the trailer on the right has an English language Voice-over, though this link does not  it would be interesting to know what if any differences there are between the two Russian Trailers, they are both identical in terms of the footage used.

We can see even at this early stage of research a unilateral connection between these ‘fan’ trailers and the film industry trailers. There appears to be a borrowed set of conventions, and the links with the title alone are enough to frame the 'real world' footage in a new manner. Yet there is a sense of technology, and human endeavour dominating the Russian Trailer, in keeping with the themes of the movie Interstellar.

Ok so 'Russian Trailers' are a phenomenon, great... but taking this study further poses a linguistic and archival challenge. Are these ‘fan made’ Russian trailers replicating an 'authentic' Russian movie trailer with real world footage, - given the image of man spinning on a wheel (52 seconds in), this seems unlikely.  So how do we understand these trailers?

Though despite looking I am unable to find any verified Russian trailers for the movies in question. We know that Trailers are tailored for international audiences and that this means different footage may appear in different marketing campaigns; as an article in Sight & Sound in 1998 points out and as a quick comparison of national marketing campaigns may indicate trailers posters and even stars are constructed in different ways for different markets, yet these trailer don't seem to be the typical fan trailer - re-editing an existing work to subvert it.  These Russian Trailers are typically taking previously existing footage, notably it seems to come from a predominantly Eastern perspective based on language cues from road signs to dialogue. Yet on some occasions there appears to be a replication of specific film trailers, other times not which brings into question how we define ‘fan trailers’. Consider the Titanic Trailer in relation to Interstellar, the connections between Titanic and it's Russian Counterpart seem to be strong at a thematic level if nothing else while the Interstellar connection seems more tenuous at least to this 'casual' observer removed from cultural context.

Presumably the connection between these Russian Trailers and the Film Trailers is more than just a name (or why else would such a connection be made) but without understanding the context of the images and indeed, understanding the dialogue I can make no further comment here on their content, but perhaps it's useful to consider the how we might go about defining them. 

These are not trailers selling nor promoting any product in a conventional sense, so we can exclude them from the canon of industry originating trailers. 

They are clearly referencing existing trailers and movies so we could consider them, as Bridget Kies writes in her blogpost, as a fan response to the industry but instead of subverting existing materials directly through re-editing or splicing, or pre-empting forthcoming trailers with one of their own, these Russian trailers sit somewhere in the middle: creating an entirely new discontinuous narrative from real-world footage. So despite neither mashing up, nor attempting to be an authentic trailer, these trailers exist within the cultural cinematic context of specific movies; much like a Fan-made trailer, as Kathleen Williams writes. Yet these trailers appear not to be 'articulations of audience desire' for a specific movie, rather, the movie provides a theme by which a compilation is made, making these instead a celebration of collective knowledge of both a film's broad narrative and thematic construct on the one hand, of technical expertise in editing, and Russian Video culture on the other. It seems to me, albeit in my limited knowledge of context that these trailers are celebratory in nature, drawing thematic connections between videosharing culture through real world footage and the wider context of the film itself forms the purpose, which sits somewhere in middle of the wider discussions of fan-made trailers. 

Yet, the reliance on what appears to be Russian footage, (I am reliably informed by my Russian Speaking colleagues this is broadly the case) surely has some form of political message within it, even it is in the form of a celebration of Russian video culture. So do we consider these trailers to be a form of social or political commentary? 

It is possible then that object of Fandom here is Russian Video culture itself, and/or the film being linked but without further study (and an improved knowledge of Russian) it is nearly impossible to tell. 
 
It is clear, however that significantly more work is needed if I'm to understand these trailers but for now enjoy Step Up 3D - Russian Trailer -    Шаг вперед 3D - Русский трейлер. 

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'Coming soon to a theatre near you'

2/9/2015

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’ Coming soon to a theatre near you’,  ‘Online theatre trailers - lost the plot?’

At the end of the first decade of the new millennium, theatre critics like those linked above started quite loudly acknowledging (well… mostly lamenting) the presence of a new form of promotional material for stage theatre: the theatre trailer. Despite theatre trailers ranging back as far as the start of the film industry, and existing during the development of the film trailer itself, as far as some critics were concerned: this was a new phenomenon, shaking the foundations of theatre*.  
*presumably this hype was also to generate traffic to blogs and sites, so let’s take it with a pinch of salt – for now.

This somewhat frosty reception says a lot about how elements of the industry saw theatre defined or constructed in relation to film (if you’re interested in this debate check out Philip Auslander's discussion of liveness, here). Tied up with the rise of live-streaming to cinemas and emerging from a similar context (check out Martin Barker’s fantastic book on the topic), theatre trailers now form a key part of audience engagement for amateur and professional, big and small companies alike. It’s now common to see theatre companies running their own YouTube channels, and if you go to a cinema you’re quite likely to see something for a live theatre event. So theatre isn't clearly-divided from film (nor would I suggest it ever has been when we consider the history of the film industry).

The point, in short, is that  theatre trailers like book trailers and videogame trailers are a 'thing', a cultural phenomenon. This phenomenon pushes into crisis the broad (and very problematic) popular definition of a trailer as a selection of clips or highlights from a movie. These theatre trailers are essentially short films, sometimes shot as short films, other times made up of recorded theatre (which potentially...makes it a film?). What follows then, are some initial findings of theatre trailers and a brief exploration of their aesthetics broadly adapted from my recent PhD thesis (available via all good libraries with a bit of searching). 


In many respects the broad categories of theatre trailers I've identified in this blog post have now been surpassed by the development of the industry and so these categories need to be treated with caution but they demonstrate two things: firstly that theatre trailers exist within a 'trailer format' and secondly that are capable and in the process of developing their own style, and this could potentially be used to help us define and understand exactly what a film trailer could look like within the broadest sense of a definition either through including theatre trailers in the category of trailers in general, or through rejecting them, and therein highlighting boundaries. 

The first kind of aesthetic identified is at it's heart 'recorded theatre', the camera remains static perhaps replicating the experience of the in-house audience seated, unable to fly through the air in fantastic close-ups or to use overhead shots editing is often ellipsis, if used at all. Here it's very easy to see the performance space highlighted as such within the frame, sometimes with audience members visible in the foreground this kind of aesthetic might remind you of home videos of school theatre productions and while technically less skilled in the creation process this kind of trailer gets right to the heart of the matter; there can be little doubt this is stage theatre. This aesthetic seems to be popular with smaller stage productions as well as being used in early theatre trailers after the turn of the millennium.

The second kind of aesthetic, and it seems to be less popular within the theatre industry, could be called the cathartic event: this largely consists of audience interviews with little to no footage of the performance itself, audiences and creator address the camera and emphasise through dialogue the ‘live experience’, it’s the trailer equivalent of a friend telling you about a movie they’ve seen. In short this is a trailer that unlike the stage world of 'recorded theatre' (that emphasises ‘theatre-ness’ and ‘theatricality’), avoids the ‘free sample’ aesthetic in favour of mystery and an unknown experience being conveyed to the audience through celebrity and audience endorsement. In this respect however this trailer could be said to be the counterpart to press junkets, to gala premier footage, yet it still operates under the label 'trailer' which shatters the concept of a theatre trailer at least, having to display the performance directly.


And finally, by far the most popular, thanks to big players like the RSC, the ENO and the NT, we have the short film aesthetic. Within such a format the performance space takes on a diegetic world in which there is less emphasis on the onscreen audience, the action is set on a stage, or a real world environment but attention is not drawn to it as with the stage aesthetic – you’d have to really focus on the background to see audience members for example. Within this there is little to no discernible performance space, and often indications of it being theatre are confined to the end of the trailer.

Here we see it integrates direct character address to construct a narrative, with the close ups of the body rather than the performance space: it avoids overtly suggesting ‘theatre’. Editing features strongly in creating a sense of a narrative in contrast to the Stage World aesthetic that presents large sections, while it lacks establishing shots and the conventions of Hollywood, you could be forgiven for initially thinking this is a film.

These are broad aesthetics and the ‘ideal type’ that I’ve listed here, but they serve a purpose; to orientate discussion of theatre on screen in an age of media convergence. Despite early criticism from those in the media there are some (in my opinion) fantastic trailers out there, and the ways of presenting theatre as an industry, and individual products within it, offer the opportunity to explore theatre’s identity on screen.

Ed's post this week, originally featured on the 'And now....from Norwich' Blog with minor changes therein, and we thank the 'And now...' team for permission to repost. 

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