Ric Thomas is a trailer creative with over ten years of experience in the industry. At the time of this interview (July 2017), he was working at the London office of trailer company Empire Design (http://www.empiredesign.com/) where he produced national and international teasers, trailers, and social media campaigns for films as diverse as London Has Fallen (Babak Najafi, 2016), Minions (Kyle Balda & Pierre Coffin, 2015), Mr Turner (Mike Leigh, 2014), The Pirates, in an Adventure with Scientists (Peter Lord & Jeff Newitt, 2012), Gold (Stephen Gaghan, 2016), Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015), Finding Dory (Andrew Stanton & Angus MacLane, 2016), and Early Man (Nick Park, 2018).

Since the interview took place, he has moved to Los Angeles-based advertising agency Buddha Jones (http://buddha-jones.com/)
 
The transcript below is an edited version of a thirty minute phone interview conducted by Keith M. Johnston (for Watching the Trailer) on Monday 17th July 2017.

Keith M. Johnston [KMJ]: Ric, to start us off on a personal note, how did you get into trailer production? What was your route into the industry?
 
Ric Thomas [RT]: Well, I’d always edited from an early age. My dad had a lot of 8mm film around the place that I used to actually splice together and project, and then I kind of used to crash from camcorder onto a VHS machine… it was kind of linear editing where you couldn’t go back and refine and edit because the tape quality would be so bad. So, I’d kind of always done it, but I never really thought of editing as a career – I studied Theatre at University and it was quite a contemporary course in that there was a lot of video editing and film work involved and actually as I did that I realised that that was what I wanted to focus on, instead of the kind of theatrical side of it – a different theatrical side of it. […] So, then I moved to London and I applied for every runner’s job going, which are very hard to get, and very competitive, and I was lucky enough to know someone at Empire Design, who are a company in London who do film trailers – this was about twelve years ago, in about 2005 – and I got a Tape Op job there, and it really was tapes and it was kind of similar to what I’d been doing earlier in that I was working off Betas and Digi-Betas. And within about six months of Tape Opp-ing there, I became an editor, and I’ve been editing ever since.
 
KMJ: Was your hope to use trailer production to move into something else?
 
RT: I had got to the point, before I got the Tape Operators job [where I was considering] making my own films just in order to have something to edit, and I never thought that trailer production was a job, and actually it’s ended up being my ideal job because I like focusing on the short form. It feels like the epitome of editing to me, where you take something that’s kind of four hours, five hours long in assembly and have to create something that’s anywhere down to five seconds long. And so, I never knew there was a job, I think like a lot of people I just assumed it was done by the directors of a film and that they… wouldn’t relinquish the creativity and let someone else work on it. But obviously once you’ve discovered that it’s an industry that exists, then it makes perfect sense – because having that outside, critical eye that we have enables us to take liberties sometimes with the material that are necessary in order to tell a story in a succinct amount of time.
 
KMJ: Is it still the case that people don’t know about the industry when they come to work in it? Is it the same as when you joined in 2005 or is there more awareness about trailer production as a job?
 
RT: It’s a bit of a bubble of an industry – it’s easy to feel that nowadays - but it’s becoming more known as an industry. I know that a lot of the vendors over here, and in LA, are kind of increasing their profile and a lot of people seem to know more about it as an industry.

Obviously, post-Cameron Diaz in The Holiday (Nancy Myers, 2006), where she literally was a trailer editor… I have a frame of reference where I can tell people… or they realise, ‘Oh, that’s what you do?’ Historically, people have thought I make trailers for cars… and now I just make trailers for Cars 3 (Brian Fee, 2017)… that wasn’t a prepared soundbite! But starting twelve years ago, that was almost pre-YouTube, so there wasn’t really a great online forum for trailer viewing – when you think back to [Star Wars] Episode 1 (George Lucas, 1999) and people had to go to see prints of a film to see the trailer before it – this was before as much material was out on the internet as there is now… so with the rise of all that I feel it’s becoming more known as a profession. But equally, some people are still surprised when I say what I do.
 
KMJ: If we think more about the day-to-day aspects of your work, is there a standard process you go through when you’re asked to work on a particular film or does it differ film to film?
 
RT: It’s definitely unique to the film and the campaign – there are probably a couple of broad areas which a job will fall into depending on the budget, depending on the client, depending on the market that they are going for […] Also, what stage the film is at. I mean, we’ll do a spectrum, you know – we’ll be working on things from day one of shooting, from dailies we’ll be assembling our own feature and working on it from that point; to where we get delivered a finished feature and even finished marketing materials from the U.S. domestic campaign and asked to… repurpose those for international markets.

I’d say that probably, increasingly, the most common is that we get in at that early stage and see dailies because pretty much you know that a vendor somewhere is going to be working on it from that stage and that’s great – it does make it slightly more difficult because I tend to like to lead creatively with the film and sometimes looking at dailies its harder to know what they’re intending the finished product to be. But equally that gives you some kind of creative freedom yourself.
 
KMJ: Given that, where (for you) do the creative opportunities arise? How do you see your creative role when that material starts coming in?
 
RT: I see it as always trying to reflect the film, unless the client comes to us specifically and says ‘this film is this way and we really want to go this way – so, you know, this film is darker than we thought, we really need to lighten it up, I think that’s rarer – more, it’s kind of that opportunity to reflect what the filmmaker’s going for… and then you take inspiration from everywhere, you look at what’s out there in the world of art; music is obviously a huge factor in terms of what we do; you look at where the general direction of trailers is going; what things are being produced; what makes you really want to raise your game – and also try and get bums on seats ultimately, something that is going to reflect the film and not reveal too much […] Obviously that’s a massive thing at the moment, people are really reacting to trailers spoiling too much, and I would say that we try not to do that – however, when you have something that’s testing better because it, you know, reveals a plot line or a character or an effects shot then it’s kind of hard to argue with things that test well.
 
KMJ: Given studios rely on testing to make decisions about what they want a trailer to do, is that a restriction for you or a useful way to hone the trailer creatively?
 
RT: It’s definitely hugely important – trailer editing is interesting because you kind of have to balance your creativity and what you want to do with a lot of other opinions, and that comes in terms of the client, and other people at the trailer vendor where you work, and the producers, and also then the audiences – and I don’t think that, in that process, any opinion is any more important or any less valid than any other… the company who do the trailer testing put in a huge amount of work, they break it down to the second, to the joke, and in comparison to other materials – it’s a really good way of getting to the core of how the trailer and the film are playing… it’s hugely important.
 
KMJ: Talking about the specifics of trailer production, how important is music as a cue for you – does it maybe provide a structure, a sense of how the trailer progresses – or are there other cues you look for?
 
RT: Music is, for me, one of the most important – if not the most important – thing. Given that we are in this job of telling people how to feel or think in a very short space of time, music is one of the quickest routes to that. Again, it would be something that you try to […] lead with the film – but the perfect score track in the film that… kind of builds over five minutes might not be perfect in the short form… I think after twelve years I can kind of listen to a track and within five seconds… know whether it’s going to work and get the right feeling for whatever the project is… I’ve been in meetings with people from record labels and [we] skip through stuff very quickly, listen to about five seconds at the start of the track then skip to the end track to see where it goes…

As you said before, there are clichés and… formulas… within trailers but I think those things happen for a reason… it’s because people can have that kind immediate emotional reaction to something, or feel something, and music [plays] a huge part [in that].

Music’s really important in terms of… where the industry is going… there are kind of tropes that come out every couple of years, and I think that comes from everyone trying to push the boundaries… twelve years ago, you could reliably use the score from another film; I think now that… well, post-internet breakdowns of every second of every trailer it’s harder to kind of  use someone else’s score because… that idea you want the music to be as unique as possible so it can be kind of identifiable with that film. Although there have been a couple of recent examples… there was a Man of Steel (Zack Snyder, 20123) trailer that used the Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-03) score to great effect… obviously pop covers has been a big thing over the last couple of years and I think as a reaction to that post-Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016) a lot of people are kind of leaning on the original songs or slightly trailer-ised versions of original songs… obviously, something that is lyrically apt to the film.
 
KMJ: Do you think the recent rise of trailers using ‘dark’ cover versions of popular songs is part of that trend?
 
RT: A lot of it’s a reaction to kind of where other advertising and others, [like] music videos, commercials, short films, and what films themselves are doing… [in terms of] ‘dark’ cover versions, there’s a library company called Pusher who actually have a load of artists and they put together a couple of albums of those kind of ethereal cover versions, and I’m pretty sure that ninety per cent of those cues got synced to something [over the last] few years. There’s also a company called The Hit House, a music library that are very good at, kind of, embellishing existing tracks – they reworked ‘The Bare Necessities’ for The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau, 2016) trailer that came out last year, but they also did a lot of work ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in [the] Suicide Squad trailer, to ‘trailerise’ it slightly more, because you know it’s great using these tracks from the 70s but actually in terms of… modern production and trailer sound design you might need something to just kind of give it a bit more oomph.
 
KMJ: For you, what does a trailer have to have to be effective? What gets your attention when you’re watching new trailers?
 
RT: I think, ironically, given what I’m doing, sometimes it’s very difficult to – being a huge film fan – it’s kind of difficult to… differentiate the trailer from the property, so sometimes I’ll (even though I’m a trailer editor) look past the trailer to the film which maybe I’m more able to do. Cutting trailers I’m kind of able to see beyond the trailer… but for me, for a trailer to be effective, I think it has to represent the film as best it can – I think I’m kind of tuned in to good sound design and good use of music; a kind of clear narrative story that kind of hooks me, but teases just enough so that I don’t feel like I’ve seen the entire film. Some things can be very successful at shorter lengths but equally sometimes, I know, the best reaction to anything I’ve heard on Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017), for example, has been when they played… the opening five or ten minutes in IMAX theatres and that played really well – so sometimes you kind of need more time to sit with the film for it to have a greater impact.

Recently… I feel like pretty much every piece I’ve seen for Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017) has been great, over the last couple of months, and I think that… is probably down to how rhythmic and music-focused the film is, and the film kind of indicates it’s Edgar Wright, it’s gonna be stylish, it’s gonna be rhythmic – so every piece for that has been really percussive, and used the great score of that film, [all to really] hit those emotional notes…

Obviously, the Mad Max [Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)] campaign was fantastic as well… there were trailers for that where you were three or four music cues into a trailer… because it’s just such a kind of mind-expanding experience of a film… so there’s that kind of blockbuster thing, and then I think… [there are trailers] that focus on real character moments as well… there was something in the last trailers for Joy (David O. Russell, 2015) where it just kind of stopped out at the end for a great bit of performance from Jennifer Lawrence and actually, I think… increasingly, playing stuff out like that, playing out a scene may be a new trend

There were trailers for the Johnny Depp film… where he was a gangster [Black Mass (Scott Cooper, 2015)] that were really focusing on that kind of performance, so I think sometimes as part of representing the film you don’t want to be too ‘cutty’ with something, you really want to kind of let the film talk for itself… in terms of letting those kind of performances come through…

In terms of my own career, I’ve done a lot of work over the last couple of years for Aardman Animation and their uniquely British sense of humour – is easy [for me] to get in tune with… I was a big fan for years, and so it’s great to be able to work on these films… I think the last couple of trailers I did for them – there was a trailer that I did for The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (Peter Lord / Jeff Newitt, 2012) where we’d been given the brief that the U.S. domestic, because it was a slightly less known property, were going to really focus on the story and characters and actually for the UK market we had the opportunity to do something kind of more interesting and… high concept, and so I presented a trailer where we’d rewritten the lyrics to ‘What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor?’ – that’s one of the things that I’m most proud of because it didn’t change much from version 1… sometimes you have those little moments of alchemy where something will – you know, the first time you do it, you’ll… it will seem right. But those are few and far between because [normally] there is a lot of versions and experimentation and things that you’ll try out that don’t work, and paths that you’ll go down… I think experience helps with that, as well. I think now, less than when I started, I’m able to know quite quickly that something isn’t working out…

What we get here [Empire Design] is we’re working a lot for the international market or a lot of the time for the UK market specifically, so we’ll get that situation where… if we come onto a TV campaign for a Universal Pictures film… increasingly we’re coming on at the teaser trailer, regular trailer stage, but a lot of the time… we’ll get material out of domestic where they have five or six trailer companies working on it – and a lot of the time there’ll be a… a great story TV spot that’s come out of the domestic campaign that has been worked on for months and it’s been tested and it’s coming out as “this is the best way to kind of represent the story of this film” – and then oftentimes we’ll have the opportunity then to say, “okay, well, what else can we do? What aspects of the film can we represent in other spots? Characters, story angle, or something interesting musically, is there any kind of… event coming up that we can… target things to… and we’ll work with the clients on that – obviously they’ll have their own ideas and we’ll throw ideas in there as well.
 
KMJ: As someone who’s been in the industry twelve years, with your experience of how it runs, what do you think have been the biggest changes – to the industry, to how trailers look, how trailers are used – essentially, what are the biggest changes you have seen?
 
RT: I think that probably one of the biggest changes that happened – before I even started – was the move to non-linear editing, and I think over the last twelve years that’s only been refined more as you’re able to… do more and more – motion graphics are getting great, you can kind of integrate [footage] with motion graphics, and also cutting is getting a lot… slicker. And especially nowadays we do a lot of work on… social, and that boundary between what was traditionally a trailer or a TV spot or a social piece or something for Instagram or Facebook is kind of getting blurred – and that ties in to another point that over the twelve years… the Internet is… a huge thing for us.

YouTube is now predominantly where people see trailers and that affects things in kind of more subtle ways, so for example you get the kind of recent trend for sort of a bumper or a ‘thumb-stopper’ in front of trailers where you’ll have – this has come in in the last… couple of years – where there will be a five second piece at the start of the trailer where you’ll get your kind of money shots out there and you get your cast out there, and you’ll get a title, to… get people’s attention in the first five seconds… and I think, even though they don’t play on every trailer, I do think that is starting to change the way that people are editing. So, I think something that has happened… if you look back twelve years ago, there were a lot more kind of “rug pull” trailers – so, for example, you know, the South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (Trey Parker, 1999) trailer of Eric Cartman, and it’s a kind of 3-D generated line and kind of moving about the place – or Scooby Doo (Raja Gosnell, 2002) teasing Batman, and you see the ears in the window and it turns out to be [Scooby Doo]… those kind of traditional “rug pull” trailers where you might be sitting in a cinema and though it was one thing and it turns out its another, they’re kind of hard to do on the Internet when you’ve clicked ‘see trailer for Batman’…

So, I think actually in response to that, and in terms of things like bumpers and thumb-stoppers, I think people are kind of changing the structure of what we do… it is something that’s gone on for a while… the trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017)… all subscribe to what I call the “Spider-Man trailer structure” which is: you don’t want to start a Spider-Man trailer with Peter Parker at school, you always start a Spider-Man trailer with Spider-Man leaping across the rooftops, and then you cut back to Peter Parker at school – and I think there’s an element of that in terms of material that we’re creating now where you want to kind of hook people in with an interesting performance, or… the title of the film, which was traditionally held back to the end, or… great VFX as early as you can.

And another thing in terms of the Internet changing the face of trailers is that there’s just more material out there… it’s not just two trailers because that’s all the exhibitors are going to be able to fit in front of films at the cinema, it’s… two or three trailers, trailers for individual territories, character pieces, slightly longer things – you have the opportunity to cut something at three minutes long if that works for the film – you’re not tied to the two minutes thirty restriction of showing it theatrically; you can have those [different] versions… in theory, the cost of finishing these things… has come down as well as the technology’s got better…

Coming from a relatively technical background, starting as a Tape Op… [as well as] making websites and things – I like balancing what you can do with a technology with a kind of creativity – and I think trailers do that really well.

KMJ: Ric Thomas, thank you very much.

This weeks blogpost is brought to you by Ed Vollans.

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Writing in 1948, John L Perentesis made comment on the motion picture trailer as election propaganda (Perentesis 1948). Within an ‘analysis of the returns for a municipal election in Detroit’ Perentesis compares the campaign (and results) between David C. Vokes (16,404 votes), and Robert J. Teagan (7,550). As part of exploring such a victory Perentesis notes:
 
One political technique employed on behalf of Vokes, and not Teagan, was publicity in the form of motion picture trailers. shown in 29 neighborhood theaters. This motion picture trailer, of thirty seconds duration, was non-chromatic in type. It included the following data: name of candidate, picture of the candidate, and the fact that he was at present judge of Common Pleas Court. It also asserted that he was nonpartisan and fair. The election was held on Monday, April 2, 1945, and the trailer was shown to theater patrons during the Saturday and Sunday evenings preceding the election day. (Perentesis, 1948 p466)
 
While Perentesis sets out to explore ‘the effectiveness of this trailer as a vote-getter for Vokes’ (Ibid) it points to an interesting phenomenon: the political trailer. Here I want to diverge from the concept of the trailer as inherently linked with a film product, unlike Keith J Hamel, who observed the practices of ‘the propaganda film’.

         These films sold the image of the studio to the public, but since they did not
         focus on a particular film, they cannot be defined as trailers (2012: 269).

I want to follow the concept set out by Staiger (1990) and followed by Johnston (2009) that the trailer is a broad term that emerged out of all the shorts on the shorts reel.
This concept has since been explored by Hesford’s work in Frames (2013)
As this blog has previously explored, trailers can be used for a number of different purposes, notably promotion (rather than sales) features across these. Spoof trailers, and the concept of the trailer format feature heavily in discussions, even with ‘trailers’ being used within shows, as a part of meta commentary on the show’s themes as well as the format of the trailer. (as with this Family Guy ‘Trailer’ featuring in the show (season 11, episode 12)

 

Yet, rhetoric as linked to format features heavily in initial discussions of trailers (see Haralovich & Klaprat 1981/2, Kernan’s 2005 analysis of persuasive trailer rhetoric, and Maier’s discussion of the persuasive functions of genre representation 2011). If, as Johnston (2009), and Vollans (2016) have separately asserted, the trailer needs not be linked directly to the sale of a product, because a trailer is still a trailer even if we don’t buy the product. Removing this sales element and considering the trailer as ‘a short film’ (Johnston 2009) and as promotion for an experiential good (Vollans, 2016) we can see the political trailer as a promotional message; the product being the party or person’s campaign promises, everything they represent – not unlike a trailer (that is both the film we hope it is, and the film we hope it isn’t, until we actually see the film). Indeed, as Frolova and Vollans (2015, respectively) have discussed ‘trailers’ can be somewhat tongue-in-cheek in their promotion of a product, as their discussion of Russian Trailers (a form of fan-trailer that casts a commentary on Russia – you can read about it here), suggests. Indeed, their discussion of Russian trailers draws the debate closer to fan made and audience practices than of the film trailers. While the Russian Trailers use publicly found footage to compile the elements of Russian they wish to ‘promote’ for satire and/or political commentary, this practice has commuted somewhat. With Donald Trump’s election to the role of President of the United States of America, the promise to ‘Make America Great again’ and to ‘put America First’ has spawned a number of similar propaganda videos. The satirical short videos from a number of EU country, and more recently, non EU countries can be found here: www.everysecondcounts.eu. Since a satirical ‘America First, Netherlands Second’ video aired on the Dutch Comedy Show Zondag Met Lubach (NY times Donadio & Stack, 2017). A number of countries have joined in promoting the…err… reasons to be considered number two. Featuring a collection of clips, logo, and voice over narration these films develop a format similar to that of the propaganda trailer identified by Hamel.
 

​I want to suggest that these “our country, second” videos, are in fact trailers, the use a collection of clips from a product (the country), and both position that country, in relation to a known genre (the campaign promises of the Trump team). The use of clips and overall satirical tone is similar to that of the Russian Trailers explored by Frolova and Vollans, but more explicit in these versions. It is possible that we will come to see these trailers as propaganda trailers, but for now do we consider these to be a facet of the broader body of trailers? Afterall, the work prior in aesthetics and genre suggests we have no finite trailer aesthetic, and that trailers are a format, or vernacular genre that encompass many many different elements, the trailer format is vast.


References
​Donadio, R & Liam Stack (2017) ‘Hearing ‘America First,’ European Nations Jockey to Be Second’ New York Times  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/world/europe/europe-trump-parody-videos.html
Frolova, K (2015) Russian Trailers #2’ www.WatchingtheTrailer.com Blog post http://www.watchingthetrailer.com/trailers-blog/russian-trailers-2

Hamel, K. J. (2012). ‘From Advertisement to Entertainment: Early Hollywood Film Trailers.’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 29(3), 268–278. http://doi.org/10.1080/10509201003667218

Haralovich, M. B., & Klaprat, C. R. (1981/2). Marked Woman and Jezebel: The Spectator-In-The-Trailer. Enclitic, 66–74.

Hesford, D. (2013). ‘“Action … Suspense … Emotion !”: The Trailer as Cinematic Performance.’ Frames. http://framescinemajournal.com/article/action-suspense-emotion-the-trailer-as-cinematic-performance/

Johnston, K. M. (2009). Coming Soon. Jefferson, North Carolina: Macfarlane.

Perentesis, J. L. (1948). ‘Effectiveness of a Motion Picture Trailer as Election Propaganda.’ Public Opinion Quarterly, 12(3), 465.

Staiger, J. (1990). ‘Announcing Wares, Winning Patrons, Voicing Ideals: Thinking about the History and Theory of Film Advertising.’ Cinema Journal, 29(3), 3–31.
 
Vollans, E. (2015). ‘So just what is a trailer, anyway?’ Arts and the Market, 5(2), 112–125.


​

​The recent controversy of No Man’s Sky (2016) has reopened the discussion on representativity (how advertised gameplay features and visuals compare to the final product) in video game promotion. The hyped up space exploration simulation from the British studio Hello Games failed to meet the high expectations of players who looked forward to a revolutionary gaming experience, but instead got what they considered a repetitive gameplay experience. 

They suggested, trailers were partly to blame for the high hopes as they emphasized features that were cut from the launch version of the game. Disappointed players started posting negative user reviews on Steam and Metacritic, seeking refunds, compiling all undelivered promises on reddit and even filed a complaint to the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) claiming false advertising on Hello Games’ part, as reported in the Metro. You can read the ASA report here.

To give you a flavour of the game, check out these trailers:

​No Man’s Sky is not the first game to be criticized for its allegedly misleading trailers. In recent years, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), Dark Souls 2 (2014), Watch Dogs (2014), Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) or BioShock Infinite (2013) sparked similar controversies around changes made during development. Different versions of a game were presented in some of the trailers and other audiovisual promotional materials than the ones customers could buy at launch. Players often perceived such adjustments as downgrades and felt that they were lied to. While some developers, such as the Polish CD Projekt RED of The Witcher fame, were able to deal with these accusations and win their fans back, the commercial fiasco of Aliens: Colonial Marines has in a way foreshadowed the recent events around No Man’s Sky. In this particular case, fans have also complained to the ASA and managed to force the publisher SEGA to add disclaimers about the non-representative nature of the used footage to the game’s trailers, albeit only long after the game was launched.

Despite these high-profile disillusionments, players still seem to attribute a degree of fidelity to video game trailers. However, just by looking at online discussions and news gaming sites a certain level of what I would call video game trailer literacy is spreading through video game communities. While it is certainly still limited as it does not prevent disappointments on the scale of No Man’s Sky, the increasingly critical reception of video game trailers shapes the promotional practice in video game industry. These negotiations over the representativity are on the side of video game industry most apparent in the form of disclaimers which accompany many promotional genres including trailers and relativize the often presumed indexical relationship between a trailer and a game. While disclaimers should not be considered a direct form of video game trailer literacy, they are influenced by the same concerns over the role of trailers within video game culture. To understand the current level of literacy, we need to take a closer look at the evolution of disclaimers. 

Killzone 2 Official E3 2005 trailer:

The history of disclaimers about the nature of footage used in video game trailers, most likely dates back to 2005 and to the CGI (computer-generated imagery) trailer for the first-person shooter Killzone 2 (2009). Premiered at that year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), this video has reportedly led many spectators to believe that the final game would look like the trailer despite the fact that the whole thing was outsourced to an external animation studio and did not show any actual gameplay. In fact, it was falsely presented by a Sony representative as gameplay footage.

However, to achieve the level of visual detail and intensity of action seen in the trailer, developers from Guerrilla Games decided to shift the development from the PlayStation 2 system to PlayStation 3 and spent 4 more years finishing it. To prevent any future confusion, video game publishers soon after adopted disclaimers which often state that “the footage is not representative of the final product”. However, there are no enforceable guidelines or rules to the actual wording of such disclaimers which sometimes results in cryptic statements. For example, the reveal trailer for Battlefield 1 (2016) includes a warning at the end saying: “Frostbite game engine footage representative of Xbox One. Not actual gameplay.” 

So then, how does such a disclaimer relate to the actual gaming experience?
​
Battlefield 1 Official Reveal Trailer: 

The cautious approach to video game trailers and their perceived representativity is to some extent undermined by the practice of trailer analysis. Frame-by-frame examinations of trailers are not specific to video game culture, movie trailers have motivated such readings since the advent of online trailer in the late 1990s, especially in the context of the second trilogy of Star Wars. However, inferring gameplay features often proves tricky and misleading even though many fans and journalists (for example, IGN’s video series Rewind Theater) seem to trust their abilities to see through marketing strategies and uncover the truth about an upcoming game. While such analyses might be critical, they nonetheless put a lot of weight onto video game trailers which were time and time again proven to be non-representative, especially in the early stages of video game development.

Cases such as the No Man’s Sky’s controversy show that players are interested in the questions of representativity of video game trailers. While the actual discussion is to some extent steered by the terminology used in disclaimers, there is still space for negotiation over the perceived role of trailers in video game culture. Are video game trailers supposed to be representative at all? Due to the socially constructed nature of the notion of representativity, this question can only be answered through discussion of the involved stakeholders. Disclaimers and trailer literacy are parts of this process.   

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Jan Švelch is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic). He received his B.A. and M.A. in Journalism and Media Studies, respectively. His research focuses on video game paratextuality, glitches, fan communities and fan cultures. In his thesis, he explores the reception of paratextuality in the textual systems of digital and analog games. Besides research, he works as a freelance journalist covering video games for various Czech magazines, including the Metacritic-aggregated Level.

Something a little bit different this week...

This is a draft of an audio-visual essay I've been trying to make sense of over the last few months. Initially inspired by reading Tom Brown's book Breaking the Fourth Wall: Direct Address in the Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2012), I began to think that the trailer is the perfect riposte to claims that direct address isn't that prevalent within cinema: every trailer features some form of direct address - whether that is the more bombastic 'You will SEE...' titles of the 1930s and 1940s, to the 'In a world' voiceover style, even to the current preference for titles and the 'knowing' cutting together of dialogue to create a separate narrative.

But trying to get all that into an AV essay was trickier than I expected, so I opted to narrow my focus a little - moving on to examples of Direct Address where a specific individual actually addresses the audience as part of the sales message. The acknowledged King of this technique remains Alfred Hitchcock, but I found some other well-known and more-obscure options, and tried to identify the main conventions that arise in this style of film trailer.

This remains a draft, so I'm happy to receive comments or suggestions below...
Many thanks,
Keith

This week's blog post comes direct to you from our friends and colleagues at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - reposted with kind permission - you can see the original blog post (with images here). Text laid out below.

As early as March, 1982, there were internal discussions between Lucasfilm and distributor 20th Century Fox about a possible Christmas ‘83 release for Jedi in the U.K. On the U.K. side, the feeling was that the holiday release would provide a good opportunity for moviegoers to get out of the house during the winter season for a family outing, and that the season lent itself naturally to merchandising tie-ins and promotions. Another consideration was that any props and costumes used in the U.S. and other regions for a summer promotion would be freed up for use in the U.K. by wintertime, specifically for window displays like those at the British department store chains Selfridges or Harrods. In the end, however, it was felt that the U.K. should enjoy a Return of the Jedi summer release, and so it was ultimately launched just a week after the U.S., starting June 2nd, 1983.

The Revenge teaser trailer was apparently attached to the summer 1982 double-bill re-release of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back in the U.K., which began its run on May 30th, 1982 with a total of 220 prints each (it had actually premiered one week prior as an exclusive engagement at Odeon Leicester Square in London). A great success, Star Wars was retired from the double-bill by early December while Empire was allowed to play in certain situations through Christmas.

It is unclear how long the “Christmas 1983” Revenge trailer was allowed to play in front of the British double-bill in 1982, but it was called out specifically on a snipe poster included in a rarely seen set of Marler Haley lobby posters sent out to larger theaters hosting the double-bill. Nevertheless, American audiences would not get a glimpse of the third film until Star Wars was re-released in the U.S. in August 1982, meaning that this may be the earliest Revenge trailer distributed – and fans from across the pond got the first peek!
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by Stephen Danley and Peter Vilmur 

Via the wonderful Oscars News Page.

Yet again, I had the privilege of attending the 17th Annual Golden Trailer Awards at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills. The GTA features a pre-show reception, post-show supper and a glitzy and fast paced presentation of awards in 17 categories to the leading creative talents in the trailer industry. 
 
For a full report on the nominees and winners—in feature film audio-visual advertising, as well as in TV, print, social media, standees and video game categories—I refer you to the GTA website, where you will also find directories of the companies that produce entertainment marketing and advertising.  In this post, and a companion to follow, I  focus on the two categories of especial relevance to our own research interests: The Golden Fleece Award and the Most Original Trailer Award. 

​ In answer to FAQ #17, “Can you explain the Golden Fleece Award,” the GTA, explains that it “honors a GREAT trailer for a not so great film,” but they leave unexamined what the Greek mythological allusion to the “Golden Fleece" has to do with achievement in motion picture marketing.  So I shall.  The skin & fur of the winged ram, sacrificed to Poseidon by Phrixus, son of King Athamas and the Goddess Nephele, after having rescued himself and his sister Helle from a murderous stepmother, symbolizes value (as well as royal power, alchemy, forgiveness and a dozen other things) and the heroic labor required to claim it.   The more proximate reference, however, is Senator William Proxmire’s fabled award (begun in 1975) for Government waste of taxpayer money.  The award that he presented 168 times over 13 years, derives from “fleece” as a transitive verb-- meaning to “charge excessively for goods and services.”  Alternately, fleece means to steal—to take the skin off of one’s back, as it were-- driving an unfair bargain based on misrepresentation of the terms of exchange, the products or services involved and/or asymmetric information wielded by parties to it.  The Golden Fleece, then, hence, celebrates a supremely accomplished version of theft via skillful (mis)representation and diabolically shrewd negotiation.   While such sharp practice is officially disavowed by advertising, albeit winked at by critics, scholars, audiences and awards shows, it is at least a liminal definition of movie marketing, a communication over as yet unseen goods, in which the parties participate with different information, goals and expectations. 

​Though any 2 minute preview of a 90 minute film will be, by its very nature, a misrepresentation, this is how the industry promotes and describes its wares and what audiences use to preview the salable qualities of a given entertainment (film, tv show, video game, legit theatre, book, etc).  Increasingly audiences are aware—or suspect—that  trailers regularly de-emphasize or conceal qualities in the feature that, while ostensibly less appealing, may be relevant to the decision of whether to watch a given film.   Despite the awareness that marketing claims are not always God’s Honest Truth, audiences retain the prerogative to object when they’ve been seduced into seeing a “not so great film” by its “great trailer.”  It’s called word of mouth and it can be lethal to commercial success. On the other hand, occasional disappointment in a feature due to the representations of its trailer, appears to add savor to those experiences of satisfaction with a film and its preview.

​At the GTA 17 event, Golden Fleece nominees honored films considered commercial failures relative to their Box Office/Cost of Production ratio and their Critical and Audience scores (per Rotten Tomatos).  This year's crop included:  Gods of Egypt; Hitman: Agent 47; Pixels; Pride, Prejudice & Zombies; and The Last Witch Hunter.    Before turning to a consideration of just how accommodating the trailer format is for the re-presentation of its feature as an excellent film deserving of consumption, I turn to a brief consideration of how each nominee managed the job required of it by producers and distributors. 

​ Gods of Egypt, a 140M supernatural epic and aspiring franchise earned ungodly reviews and a mere 31M at the box office.  Stiff acting, unpersuasive CGI, obscure plotting and wooden dialogue presented a challenge –perhaps insurmountable—to the marketing.  And yet, in this 1:32 teaser-style version (the shortest of three official trailers cut), the marketers used a haunting music cue to accentuate the more saleable aspects of the film. A simple explication of plot, a thrilling action montage and a dramatically resonant button positioned the feature as a quality production. Gone was Geoffrey Rush’s intra-diegetic narration; instead the story is told with music, lyric and images--cut to situate the action and consequence among clear characters and motivations. Clunky dialogue and cheesy effects were embargoed, gorgeous visuals were emphasized and the trailer sold an account of the Gods of Egypt we might have worshipped rather blasphemed.  Shorter is often better. 

Trailer version #2 for the feature ​Hitman: Agent 47, adopts the GM assassin’s P.O.V., rather than that of the “government” that’s trying to stop him. (Official trailer #1--which was not nominated--reverses this approach.)  And it’s the right choice for a film about an outsider, an anti-hero on the run with a damsel in distress, who must first be persuaded that he's her hero.  What Rotten Tomato’s disparaged as “dull violence and product placement without enough action” in the feature is concealed by kinetic pacing, well-choreographed fights, chases, escapes and explosions.   Unsurprisingly, the music cue performs the emotional and dramatic heavy lifting.   Released during our endless American primary season, this trailer emphasizes resistance to a corrupt and vicious government in a prudent–though far from radical—narrative framework that is also, at least partially, true to the feature.  A trailer enjoys the privilege of exerting  recuperative editorial oversight, and it ought.  

​Despite the winning premise and bankable stars that got Pixels greenlit as a big-budget comedic action-thriller, critical and audience reaction capture the challenges the finished film presented to marketers: a nearly incomprehensible plot; weak dialogue; puerile comedy; and underdeveloped characters.  Rising to the challenge a number of “official” trailers were cut by SPE & the Refinery AV, including the voice-over structured “Game On” trailer, version #2, that won the GTA 17 Fleece.   Whereas version #1 used graphic cards to establish premise, stakes and likely outcome, the increasingly rare V.O. approach used by Version 2 delivered the right measure of mock-gravity and “period” resonance (the vid-games in question are from the 80’s, high-water mark of the Voice of God approach to trailer making) to position the film as over the top, self conscious and funny.   The set up is simply presented, while distracting plot complications (viz. the heroes translation to a spaceship to compete against the alien invaders there) are de-accentuated if depicted.  Pixels does indeed, have a clever concept and it features Adam Sandler in a bread and butter role and Peter Dinklage in an unfamiliar one.  Moreover, excellent special effects (CGI) reflect the 88M production budget.  There’s a very funny button and the perfect (though expensive) sound cue:  Queen’s “We are the Champions.”    The excellence of the trailer helped the film open at #1, earning a respectable 24M its first weekend before word of mouth damaged its long term prospects. 

​For Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, inspired by the best-selling novel of the same name,  producers needed a trailer to open this unholy mashup of genres to an unlikely mix of demographics.   After all, zombies and Jane Austen fans usually meet only in the Cineplex bathroom.  Appropriately, a teaser trailer was selected as the means of positioning and previewing a problem feature.  I say, “teaser” for two reasons:  the brevity (only a minute and some few seconds) of the trailer; and the paucity of story elements presented.  Fortunately, the title already explains the film: rural aristocrats vying for appropriate marriages (in terms of rank, wealth, beauty and social distinction) during an outbreak of zombie-ism.   The first 30 seconds of the trailer telegraph to the viewer that this will be another high-class costume drama.  As classical piano plays beneath a scene of rural prosperity, heroine Lily James names the qualities an eligible young woman should  possess. But, the genre indications turn when a zombie threat is revealed;  the cue concludes with a bang, while an electric guitar, drum and synthesizer jam take up the burden of what follows, when James mentions the last qualification demanded of those who wish to survive: the ability to kill zombies with dispatch.   The next 30 seconds feature comely maidens kicking zombie ass.  Though there’s little detail beyond that, this calculating and discrete trailer does a capable job with the odd materials it is obliged to combine, helping to recover 11M at the B.O. for a bomb that cost 28M to make.    

Recouping only 27M on a 90M budget, Vin Diesel’s 2015 flop, The Last Witch Hunter, performed appallingly with critics and audiences alike. Yet, the trailer spins a moody,  complicated tale of a time traveling hero facing a transhistorical conspiracy of malevolent mages, sadistic sorceresses and dark-arts devotees.  Plus, you get Michael Caine & Elijah Wood, for the price of Vin Diesel underacting in his usual, phlegmatic manner.   For a feature derided as “grim, plodding and ill fit for Diesel” by critics, the trailer makers deploy the usual arsenal of big-budget, supernatural action thrillers:  a Carmina  Burana-like music cue,  obligatory action, explosions, dead-pan delivery, stars in high-dudgeon and a winning button.  There’s lots of slamming beats, quick cuts and disorienting sequences in which time, place and occasion are jumbled, as if to say, look at all the sets and events and plots here for your viewing pleasure.  Michael Caine’s sonorous intra-diegetic voice streamlines the balky narrative and adds a high-brow savor to the expected stew of cliché, clumsy dialogue and existential threat.  It looks fun in a B movie sort of way; the trailer earned its nomination. 

​When trailer audiences complain about deceptive representation while in the same breath anticipating such practice-- when a leading industry awards show’s most entertaining moment is the presentation of the Golden Fleece-- we might well ask why it is so common and customary (if not always simple) to gild the turd or dress the turkey of a feature film.   Certainly,  the relative lengths of  trailer to feature invites a selection of “representative” scenes, dialogue, jokes and shots that are representative only in an aspirational sense.  Yes, those elements will appear in the feature, but they may appear but once and be the best there is rather than one among many. 
 
Then too, because storytelling in trailers is non-narratively structured, reorganizations of the plot are necessary and not always uninspired.  Audiences extrapolate, assume and interpret the compression of event and the reordering of sound, image and word. When an editor cuts for pace, energy, knowledge and arrangement of materials in a manner that represents as well as supplements and comments upon the feature, a strict correspondence between the semantic content of the one and the semantic content of the other will suffer.  But it's not certain that the quality of the preview and promotion will likewise. 
 
Non-diegetic elements like sound and music cues as well as graphic cards and voice over offer another ‘dimension’ of information and appeal in a trailer that a feature usually does without.  While the inclusion of direct address can break the “realism” effect of a trailer’s seduction, because it is part of the received and familiar formula, this mode of engaging the audience and communicating information don't typically disturb a viewer's immersion in the experience. Instead, extra-diegetic elements are consumed as part of the entertainment rather than self-referential intrusions into it.  The music cue, for instance -- whose significance is entirely independent of its ultimate presence in the feature-- constitutes the most effective and persuasive component of the form.
 
Lastly, the habit of mind with which a typical viewer watches a trailer is part of why it's so easy to present a formulaic studio film as a genre-busting indie  or position a painful family drama as a comedy.  We are part of the communicational exchange and our expectations and desires are complicit in the dance of hope, promise, discovery and/or dismay.  We know better, and yet we want to believe; we know better and yet we presume to discern through the veils of advertising the reality of the film previewed.   We complain about being shown only the best bits while we expect, nay demand, to see best bits, eager to see more of the same when we view the feature, and outraged when we discover there aren’t any. It seems we enjoy this game, with its low stakes, its surprises, delights and the disappointments, the chance to test our skill against the world’s greatest fleecers working in the world's greatest medium of representation, persuasion and promotion. 

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Fred Greene 

 At the end of March every year, the Society for Cinema & Media Studies hosts it’s annual conference, it’s a chance for colleagues to get together and catch up, present papers and network. 2016’s SCMS in Atlanta, Georgia was no exception but it threw into contrast the sheer volume of work surrounding promotion and promotional shorts. While it’s impossible to collate everything from the conference (the programme can be found here) I’d like to explore just a few of the presentations here in the hope to build dialogue around the trailer, with apologies to those papers I couldn't attend and to the few that I'm going to consider here I cannot hope to do your papers justice so please free to add your comments below. In the future I want to explore other papers' themes so watch this space. 
 
Anticipation and the trailer

Trailers are arguably all about anticipation, the very nature of advertising something in advance of it's availability is to develop anticipation (some may say 'desire', but I find this term too loaded to use here). No where is anticipation or suspense more overt than in the horror movie, and indeed in horror movie promotion where the audience experience is key. 

Alexander Svensson’s work into promotion and horror opened up possibilities in considering the promotional horror paratext as an element of affect and performance similar to the film itself. In this respect Svensson echoes the work of Picarelli and of the work of the Trailaurality project on the scream in the horror trailer, exploring how viral and catharsis is used to generate and sustain interest across a campaign. Svensson used an example (amongst many others) of the Devils Due movie marketing campaign and how it plays on the notions of expectations, our delight comes in the form of other’s reactions.

You can check out the equally interesting website for the movie Devil's Due here.

 
Having perhaps been scared ourselves, we are far more likely to have memory recall, or perhaps to build on this experience by sharing that experience with others, becoming pranksters ourselves or perhaps we will sit in isolation at our computers seeking similar videos to watch other’s experiences.

This kind of experience has long been the case in horror, issues of catharsis, affect and audience reaction remain at the heart of the genre, Last House on the Left for example, famously had the tagline ‘to avoid fainting, keep repeating it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie’, while much earlier William Castle and Hitchcock employed a variety of stunts to promote their work (the subject of which has been extensively covered but may be worth another blog post as I build ideas up).
 
Yet in capitalising on viral culture, these campaigns have the propensity to take on a life of their own, circulating as part of a series of reaction videos (many of which can still be found on YouTube with recent comments), the campaign video has itself become a cultural artefact for it’s ability to fascinate and/or scare the audience. Indeed this type of promotional video plays very much on anticipation; both anticipation within the short film, but also for the ‘central’ text being promoted.
 
This form of anticipation is very much part of the cinema industry, an industry that uses anticipatory terminology ‘teasers’, ‘preview’, ‘sneak peak’, ‘exclusive’, all of which are designed to draw the audience into a relationship of exclusivity (you, the fans are special, whereas those other non-audience members aren’t). It is on this note that Erin Hanna gave an analysis of San Diego  ComicCon highlighting the competing discourse between drawing fans in to an exclusive event, while keeping elements of it under control (specifically pirate videos of exclusive content). Arguing that ComicCon has value to it’s audience because of it’s exclusivity (Yes, a lot of people can attend, can buy merchandise but a greater number of people cannot attend) Hanna notes, attendees of a specific event (the launch of Star Wars Force Awakens) were invited to another open air performance complete with orchestra and fireworks. Despite being an open space, and thus unavoidably heard and seen from a distance, it is the intangible experience of attendees allowed in the area that is the source exclusivity, yet simultaneously publicising an event yelling ‘here is something special, but you’re not special enough for it’.  Taking the Hall H launch of Star Wars; Force Awakens as an example of this exclusivity, Hanna works through the power organisation, and the lines of exclusivity discourse that run throughout ComiCon, forming sights of pleasure anticipation and exclusivity among fans. Both these papers tie in with a much larger discussion colleagues on the Watching the Trailer project are having, you can read Keith M Johnston’s (far more eloquent) work on anticipatory culture here. If anything viral videos and events like ComiCon serve to outline the very notion that the event is always coming soon, as part of a much larger network of texts; posters may feed to trailers, trailers in turn may feed to films (or not in some cases, leaving some audiences forever in an anticipatory twilight zone), films feed into franchises, spin offs, other work by our favourite stars. Are we living now in an anticipatory culture, or is this simply an extension of the media industry which after all is technologically and financially predicate on the next frame? And what about those audience members that anticipate very little, can we theorise a culture of anticipation and still retain audience agency? 

The answers I'm sure, are coming soon.
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and now the shameless publicity...

Ed Vollans is a researcher for the watching the trailer project, he tweets at @ed_vollans, his work 'So just What is a trailer anyway?' was highly commended in the Emerald Publishing Literati awards, which means you can read it FREE temporarily here.
 

This fortnight we're joined by Andrés Auchterlonie, welcome Andrés! 

Andrés is an Argentinian media researcher, interested in movie trailers, social media, advertising and entertainment marketing. Has a BA in Film and TV Production and a one year certificate in Digital Marketing, and specialises in movie marketing.

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Over the years, movie trailers have had to adapt to the demands of cinema, society and the market, evolving with them in order to not remain static over time. Nowadays, trailers can be considered as a social representation of a society characterised by immediacy, finding themselves in a spectacularised space where artistic creation and digital culture must come together to recognise the needs of a customer who is accustomed to instant information. It is important to know that this new audience thinks through emotions and not with logical arguments.

   In a society where everything is consumed at high speed, there is little chance of attracting the consumers attention, that is why the Creative Marketing department must adapt their strategies to these new ways of consumption, where internet, social networks and consumers as content generators play an important role for the film´s success. With the evolution of technological devices and the emergence of social networks, the way that audience watch movie trailers has been transformed into an experience of personal consumption, but thank to social networks this way of watching them become a collective experience through exchange of opinions, discussions and analyze of coming attractions. Thanks to technological devices such as smartphones and tablets movie trailers became a take away format where their consumption can be extended to any public sphere thanks to the possibility of transporting them in these new devices. It is important to offer a product that fits into consumers lifestyles.
Advertising trailers on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat brings not interactivity but also a bi-directional exchange with consumers that are seeking for a creative, interactive and engaging experience. In this new era audiences became into an element with great power because they generate and produce content. Marc Cortés called them prosumers (Producer + Consumer) explaining "... Markets are changing and they are now conversations where customers are no longer expressionless or inert beings, but they are transformed into social elements because they generate new contents ", in those virtual spaces prosumers exchange opinions about movie trailers. If their opinions are positive the trailer can be a hit and going viral or they can destroy it as it happened with Green Lantern´s (2010) movie trailer. They determine whether the product is attractive or not. Nowadays thanks to social media, marketers can verify really quickly if a trailer it is accepted or not by the public, as it happened with Star Wars: The force awakens (2015) movie trailer that on it first day on the network quickly obtained more than 112 million views, which generated a great conversation on the social media. Doug Hirsch Yahoo! Movies G.M in an interview with Variety explains "...The studies were worried about seeing their trailers on the Internet, now they are terribly worried if they cannot be found by users on the networks." Thanks to a "Like" "Tweet" or "Retweet" the trailer becomes a hypermediate content that the consumer can share, criticise or appreciate.

     What every marketer want is that the audience talk about their film in order to go viral. Using social networks is a way to segment our audience and corroborate if the product it is accepted or not by them. In addition it is really important to generate a good strategy to succeed in this really hard competition. The movie trailers purpose as an entertainment marketing strategy is to create an effect of anticipation in the audience, they are in charge of sharing it or pressing the "like" button generating anticipation and producing word of mouth. Nowadays for consumers is more important what their peers evoke of a product that what the product says about itself, if they make positive comments about a movie trailer they can generate on the others users the desire to watch it. Currently it is worrying if a trailer does not receive the amount of likes or views needed to become viral, for this reason communication strategies must be really creative since there is only one chance to convince the public and generate the need to watch the film.

     Finally, marketers must bear in mind that is not necessary to have a big budget to make a good marketing campaign through social networks because what matters and what will give us success is the creativity of the strategy.

Selected works:

Cortes, Marc (2009) “Bienvenido al nuevo marketing”. En E. Sanagustín (Dir.): Del 1.0 al 2.0: Claves para entender el nuevo marketing. Bubok Publishing, pp. 14.

Janes, Stephanie (2014). Viral strategies in Hollywood Cinema.

Johnston, Keith M. (2009) Coming Soon. Film Trailers and the Selling of Hollywood Technology. McFarland.

Lieberman Al, Esgarte Patricia (2006). The Entertainment Marketing Revolution:
Bringing the Moguls, the Media, and the Magic to the World.

Lozano, Javier. (2012) Nuevas estrategias publicitarias digitales.


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This week's post sees Erin Pearson talking about Funny Ha Ha, and Mumblecore - welcome Erin, it's great to have you onboard.



                                          Funny Ha Ha (Dir. Andrew Bujalski 2002)

As part of a larger PhD project examining a range of promotional media, I’ve recently been considering the ways that film trailer sound—the music, dialogue and ambient noise—plays a role in shaping the spaces of American indie film culture, which is thought to originate roughly from the mid-1980s. In my research so far I’ve been exploring the idea that the sound mix in trailers for independent films has worked, in its own particular way, to both inform and construct indie as a series of concepts, practices and viewing spaces. What follows reflects a few of my initial thoughts on indie trailer-scapes through the lens of ‘Mumblecore’, which will be fleshed out and brought into conjunction with other types of indie filmmaking and promotion over the coming months.
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As a strand of American independent filmmaking associated with a characteristic sound, Mumblecore has been especially illuminating in helping to understand how sound in the film trailer operates, and to what effects. In popular discourse the term ‘Mumblecore’, thought to have been coined by a sound designer as a joke, has come to refer to a series of independent films that emerged early to mid-2000s that demonstrate certain sonic and narrative characteristics. Although the ‘mumbling’ aspect has been associated with slightly loose, vague and meandering narratives, similarly the distinct sounds of films such as The Puffy Chair (Mark and Jay Duplass 2005), Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski 2005), Four Eyed Monsters (Susan Buice and Arin Crumbly 2005), and LOL (Joe Swanberg 2006) have been described by Nessa Johnston as markers of an excessive “indie-ness” that highlights an improvised tone, a lack of formal training, and a low-budget aesthetic that attests to naturalism (2007: 69). The music and ambient sound in the trailer for Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski 2002), often thought to be the first mumblecore film, does appear to speak to these elements in its catchy indie tunes and its lack of sound effects; but more than this, in forming a sonic space with its own tonal character, the trailer can also be seen to draw from and shape notions of a particular indie “territory” through its sound design.
 
The Funny Ha Ha trailer features three songs by Brooklyn-based indie rock band Bishop Allen, who also appear in the film: ‘Busted Heart’, ‘Another Wasted Night’, and ‘Things Are What You Make Of Them’ (in order of appearance) play alongside scenes from the film and title cards. However, the flux in music volume throughout the trailer forms a consistent interplay between foreground and background, rhythmically shifting focus between the aesthetic qualities of the songs and the images. The songs can be described as modest and humble, forming catchy and simplistic indie-pop beats through guitars, bass, drums and keyboard. Notably, there is a lack of explicitly synthesised sounds or technological gloss. Even the voice of the lead singer (Justin Rice) has an untrained quality that, to my ear, is charming in its slightly offbeat style; a wobbling tone that seems modestly awkward and perhaps a little unsure of itself, but persists with gusto regardless. Of course, this is also an assessment that could be levelled at the narrative, which follows a small group of post-college early twenty-somethings as they embark on “adult” life, and the low-budget aesthetic of the image (filmed on 16mm). In Wendy Fonarow’s analysis of British indie music culture, she states: “For indie, a raw, simple, underproduced quality to sound suggests closeness to the wellspring of musical authenticity” (2006: 42). Although the image quality evident in the Funny Ha Ha trailer certainly exhibits such “raw” and “underproduced” elements (in its use of 16mm film, ‘natural’ lighting and on-location filming), I believe that sound design also prominently speaks to the supposed “authenticity” of the film. Such a dynamic might be considered as a sign of a significant overlap in indie discourse between the spaces of film and music cultures, and one worthy of further exploration; suggesting convergence between these media forms that not only allow them to speak to one another in the trailer format, but also illustrate something of the mobility of indie audiences between different media realms.
 
It would be an understatement to say that the scenes and dialogue are simply ‘well-matched’ to the music; they form a mutually productive synergy, the latter of which is noticeably isolated through sound design in both the trailer and film. There is a lack of ambient sound in the trailer’s scenes: one sees Marni (Kate Dollenmayer) running into a friend and his wife unexpectedly at the supermarket, a place that one would assume to be filled with bustling ambient noise. Yet the soundtrack only registers the trios’ dialogue, which although accompanied in the trailer by the music track, appears to draw focus to the cringingly stilted conversation between them. Together, the music and dialogue foreground the awkward interactions and anxious articulations that have come to characterise not only this film and Mumblecore, but have also to some degree become recognisable artefacts of indie more broadly; perhaps not least in some part due to the advertising and marketing discourses surrounding films such as Funny Ha Ha, as but one film that attempts to claim a foothold in the spaces of indie through a range of promotional methods that includes the trailer soundtrack.
 
      There is also an important commercial synergy to consider, with the sudden and unexplained changes in songs throughout the trailer being reminiscent of the ability to skip through CD albums and MP3s. It is worth emphasising however that only the beginnings of the songs are played, forming a trailer consisting of three distinct tonal registers. I am reminded here of Raymond Williams’ concept of televisual “flow”; originally related to television of the broadcast era, flow suggests that programming—aimed at keeping viewers watching—attempted to generate fluid movement through programming and advertising that would lead the viewer from one show to the next (2000: 233). Distilled in this trailer is a sense of flow between the scenes and songs that together form a series of different tonal textures and appeals to the film (a budding romance, quirky comedy, and potential heartache). But, it is a flow made potent through the very format of the trailer, itself made up of “beginnings” and promises. Vinzenz Hediger points out that the trailer is a space where “infinite possibility dwells, where the world, and the world of images, is all it can be” (2004: 154). To this I would add that sound in the trailer also plays a crucial role in forming this space of beginnings, generating a sense of anticipation not only for the middle and end of the images but also for the music soundtrack; here Bishop Allen’s 2003 album Charm School that features all three songs.
 
Even though it is almost too easy to become caught up with comparing indie trailers with the Hollywood “mainstream” as a negative and reductive binary comparison, my thinking is that it is perhaps more fruitful to consider—as I have begun in a small way to outline here—the specific dynamics and intricacies of these film trailer soundtracks through representative case studies of strands such as Mumblecore. I wonder if not enough attention has been given to the ways that trailers work to both forge connections between and differentiate indie film products, not only from Hollywood, but from other types of independent filmmaking and media such as music; and also, how these promotional styles and practices work to form ‘indie’ despite its many different rivulets and offshoots, as a series of spaces that converge to form a film culture.
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Bio
 
Erin Pearson is a PhD candidate at University of East Anglia. Her work explores the ways that promotional materials work to shape the discursive and physical spaces of American ‘indie’ film culture. Erin has contributed a chapter focusing on the role of review journalism in structuring indie to the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Indie (ed. Geoff King). She has also written for Intellect’s World Film Locations and Directory of World Cinema series, and is the reviews editor for Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.
​

​References:

Fonarow, Wendy. 2006. Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music. Music/culture Series. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press.
 
Hediger, Vinzenz. 2004. ‘A Cinema of Memory in the Future Tense: Godard, Trailers and Godard Trailers’. In For Ever Godard, edited by James Williams, 141–59. London: Black Dog Publishing.
 
Johnston, Nessa. 2014. ‘Theorizing “Bad” Sound: What Puts the “Mumble” into Mumblecore?’ The Velvet Light Trap 74: 67–79.
 
Williams, Raymond. 2000. “Programming as Sequence or Flow.” In Media Studies: A Reader, edited by Sue Thornham and Paul Marris, 231-237. New York: New York University Press.

As the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority publishes its top 10 most complained about adverts it raises one very important, if somewhat tangential, question for Ed Vollans...


Despite all the public discourse, and many many compilation lists, and videos, can a movie trailer actually mislead?
 
 
This is a question that’s been plaguing me for years, and it’s one that comes up time and again when discussing film promotion and public discourse. Opening her book, Lisa Kernan notes this issue tends to dominate popular dialogue, and indeed the press commentary surrounding the results of the first Watching The Trailer survey focused on this heavily resulting in part in our project to study public discourse becoming part of that discourse.
 
Yet there’s little work in this field beyond public commentary. Trailers are a form of advertising and there are some strict rules surrounding advertising, stemming in part from a English Civil law case for the 1890s; ​Carlill v Carbolic smoke ball company....

... in which the company claimed, anyone who found their medical aid didn’t stave off the flu could receive £100. When Mrs Louise Carlill contracted the flu she asked for her cash – she was refused and eventually sued successfully. This became the basis for considering elements of adverts as being a form of contract. 


Fast forward to the present day, and within ready memory issues of ‘misleading’ advertising for film promotion are well documented: Sony Pictures for instance was told to pay $1.5million over including critical praise from a reviewer called David Manning. Manning was discovered to be a creation.

Ok so we know for sure that advertising regulation can apply to some elements of the film’ promotion but that case was of posters, what about trailer themselves? Well firstly we need to consider that despite some fairly high profile commentary, there’s no documented case of a trailer being found to mislead within a court of law, and most authorities able to deal with this case typically apply only to trailers on the tv, or pertain about the classification; the suitability of each advert for a particular age group.
(*Authors note: I can’t find any, but welcome anyone who can direct me to one such case).
 
What there are, however, are a number of complaints, and law suits, which for various reasons are either resolved out of court, or the courts and/or authoritative bodies reject the claims.
 
In the UK, going to the courts may be possible, but it may seem a bit extreme, you’re more likely to attempt and form of redress by consulting the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) first. This was true of the case in New Zealand of J. Congdon who complained of an explosion that didn’t occur in the film but did in the trailer. The ASA was told by paramount that it’s a “usual and longstanding practice in the film industry” to produce trailers well before the final edit of a movie is submitted. “Thus, despite our best intentions, it is always possible that certain scenes appearing in an advertisement or trailer may not appear in the final version of a film,” and the ASA then took not further action – but Paramount did refund the cinema goers cost of the ticket.
 
 So in this case it was the literal inclusion of an image that didn’t make the final cut. But it’s important to note that this was a trailer that aired on TV, and thus came under the (New Zealand) ASA’s broadcaster remit. (you can read more about this here)

In the UK at least the ASA advised me that (albeit in 2009), if one felt they had seen a misleading trailer at the cinema, my first point of contact was to be the cinema and then the local authority in which the cinema was situated. Why the local authority? Well I believe this stems from the video recordings act (1984), and the various local authorities legislation that (long story short) places the power of authority over the cinema with the local authority. (click here for more info).

Yet there has been at least one high profile case of ‘trailer infidelity’, in which an individual, Sarah Deming attempted to sue for the ‘Drive’ Trailer misleading her into seeing the film. The film she expected to see was more of a Fast and the Furious style of movie… as the Hollywood reporter notes:
 
"Drive bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film… having very little driving in the motion picture," the suit continues. "Drive was a motion picture that substantially contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith.

Deming is seeking a refund for her movie ticket, in addition to halting the production of "misleading movie trailers" in the future. The plaintiff intends to turn her individual case into a class action lawsuit, thereby allowing fellow movie-goers an opportunity to share in the settlement reports Detroit's WDIV-TV.

In 2013 however, Deming’s case was dropped after a lengthy process and an appeal. So legally, unless we can find a ruling, we can say that a trailer cannot mislead legally (because shouldn’t all defendants be considered innocent until proven guilty?).

Yet ultimately the lack of case law in this case, doesn't mean that trailers won't be found to mislead in the future. Indeed, we know that trailers can mislead in terms of thematic and character representation, as earlier work in this blog has suggested, you can represent a film in a variety of different ways as Kathleen William’s work on mashup and remade trailers will attest.


The question then remains, can a trailer ever truly represent its movie?