NPR breaks down the cinematic language of the film trailer in, The Art of the Modern Movie Trailer. I watched all of the selections in the article several times, and the one thing they all had in common was that they offered an emotional taste of the movie they were advertising. I think this is why the trailer has become such a ubiquitous vehicle for film promotion, and it’s why authors are adopting the form (admittedly with differing levels of technical skill and success) to promote their books. Print advertising, when the product concerned is a story, has distinct limitations. Stories are emotional journeys experienced over time. Trailers mimic the experience of watching/reading/hearing a story because they offer an emotional taste of the complete film or book. Turn lines, hits, and rises are all just road signs designed to move you fast through a few selected story points so you can experience the emotions that will be found in the full movie or book.
In the case of The Turncoat, the premise is Rebel spy falls in love with British officer, and the primary emotion is excitement laced with the fear of danger, anger at injustice, exhilaration in fighting back, and romantic longing. The turn lines, hits, rises, and button make it possible to cram all that into 2 minutes, or three script pages. After watching a lot of trailers and talking with the director of the excellent Dawn of the Dreadfuls trailer, I decided to craft the script around two short scenes. These comprise about one and half pages of the script. The rest is visual excitement and voice over.
Some interesting views on book trailers from around the web. In an NPR interview, Dennis Johnson, creator of an award for book trailers called The Moby, says,
“the whole concept of making a movie about your book is a denigration of your book.”
Johnson doesn’t explain how trailers denigrate books, but Drew Grant in Salon feels that book trailers are,
“a fairly ridiculous concept: trying to market literature to people who would rather wait until the movie version comes out.”
And in the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Shea deplores book trailers for borrowing from the marketing methods of Hollywood.
“A promotional Facebook page or Twitter feed? They make at least as much sense as a newspaper ad, these days. But short videos about books modeled after the Dolby-enhanced, hype-saturated previews used to sell “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”?
There’s a not-too-subtle books good, movies bad thread running through these pieces, but then Shea goes on to denigrate book trailers for not being Hollywood enough:
“…yet the videos’ earnest misguidedness is part of their charm: It’s refreshing that our word people can’t fake being video auteurs.”
This assumes that book trailers are always made by the authors themselves, when in fact some authors make their own trailers, some hire production companies to make their trailers, and sometimes publishers commission or produce trailers in-house.
I haven’t been able to find another example of an author/filmmaker directing their own book trailer, though, so I’m probably alone in the wilderness on this one. And none of the pieces above gets to grips with the filmmaking in book trailers, and because of that, they miss the reason why book trailers are both too Hollywood and not Hollywood enough: they skip the step of adaptation. There’s no effort being made to translate the verbal story into the visual story.
There’s a piece in the LA Times from November titled “Book publishers borrowing a page from Hollywood,” and some commentary on it over in the paper’s Jacket Copy column, “How to make a book trailer for $50,000.” Both pieces are focused on the work of a single production company, whose book promotion spots are aimed at television. Here’s a sample:
I think the article might better be titled, “Book publishers borrowing a page from television advertising.” These spots are short—fifteen to thirty seconds—whereas feature film trailers average more like two minutes. And they use the visual language of television—almost every shot is a medium or an act-out-style push into a character reaction and there is virtually no camera motion—rather than the wides, closes, and sweeping camera movements of cinema.
This makes a lot of sense, as these spots are produced specifically for television, but they go by in a flash when you watch them online—and they don’t get anywhere near the internet play as cinematic trailers, like this one, for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. Full disclosure: I went to film school with the folks from Dirty Robber, and think they’re brilliant.
I don’t think one style is necessarily better than the other—but they serve different purposes. The TV commercial book advertisement suits a bestselling series from a proven author–viewers/readers already know what to expect from the book. The commercial really just tells them that it’s coming, or it’s out. The cinematic trailer is too long to play on TV, but it’s better suited to introducing a new property or author, and makes a more satisfying watch online.
I’d like to see this documentary, Coming Attractions, about the history of the movie trailer, but it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. For now, though, there are some interesting selections here, for the “50 Greatest Trailers of All Time” by IFC, including the Spiderman trailer I broke down a few days ago.
This year I finally made it to the annual re-enactment of Washington’s Crossing. Or at least the rehearsal, which took place on December 11. There is also a Christmas crossing. Unfortunately, conditions were too dangerous on the 11th for the boats to cross, but it was still great to wander around the park in Washington’s footsteps.
The highlight of the day occurred when Glover’s Regiment, standing on the Pennsylvania side of the river, fired five volleys across the Delaware, and some wag in the crowd cried out, “Take that, New Jersey!”
Tonight I broke down the movie trailer I’m using as a model for my Turncoat book trailer. It’s a 2:39 teaser for the 2002 Spider-man, and I chose it because it conveys the premise of the story and promises the movie will contain action and romance.
My breakdown isn’t 100% accurate. There are more than 75 shots in this trailer. You can see where I cheated a little (shot and reverse!) and a lot (action!). I’d guestimate that there are really more than 100 shots in the trailer. But the exact number of shots wasn’t what I was trying to determine. I’m interested in structure and content.
I placed voice over (VO) in Red, and dialogue in Green. The first 26 seconds of the trailer are entirely voice over. The images are all of Spider-man. We don’t see Peter Parker’s face until second 23, when he pulls his mask off and we whip pan into a white flash and go back in time.
That’s when the switch to dialogue occurs. Everything we’ve seen up to this point is the extraordinary world of Spider-man, swinging through the caverns of Manhattan and fighting crime. Now we get the ordinary life of Peter Parker (It wasn’t always like this.) We’ve jumped back into the movie’s first sequence, to Peter’s status quo, his collision with the catalyst, his transformation, and the benefits of it (seconds 27 through 104).
This is a clever structure. If the trailer started with the ordinary life of Peter Parker, like the movie, the audience might lose interest. Because the trailer is not the movie. This isn’t a paying audience. This is an audience that is (most of the time) waiting to see something else. We’re quick to tune out. But by starting with the visual excitement of Spidey vaulting skyscrapers, the trailer hooks us. Now we’re on board to find out how Peter Parker became Spider-man.
But we need to know what the conflict will be. At second 105, roughly half way through the trailer, we meet the antagonist, Norman Osborne, who will become Green Goblin. At 1:27 Peter accepts the call to adventure, and voice over is reintroduced to state the film’s themes. We know this movie will be about something.
At 1:39 Peter accepts his new identity. With this single exception, the story content of the trailer is entirely Act One and Act Two. “I’m Spider-man,” is more of an Act Three moment (possibly end of Act Two), but it’s the only one I see here.
The romance subplot is peppered in at 0:27 (Can I take your picture for the school paper?) and at 1:01 (Wow!) and at 1:50 (Do I get to say thank you this time?).
At 1:41 the title cards start, with the release date, which will be repeated later. The titles read: One hero will take you for the ultimate spin. I honestly didn’t follow them too closely. A filmmaker I admire once pointed out that we hate to read words on screen, and I tend to agree with him. Much of the last 40 seconds is spectacle, and who wants to read when you can watch Spidey swing through New York?
There’s a “button” on the end of this trailer, a joke that works well for the tone of the film, but probably wouldn’t suit my project, but it’s worth noting that I’ll need something to punctuate the end, a line or a shot that take us out on a high note.
Now that I’ve identified the story elements that worked in this example, I can start scripting my trailer for The Turncoat.
