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.
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.
Why "The Golden Fleece?"
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.
Representation, Misrepresentation &/or Deception
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.
The GTA 17 Nominees for the Golden Fleece Award
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.
Dressing the Turkey?
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
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
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