So, lockdown is slowly easing away. Shops are opening up again and the football is back on the telly, so that means it is not long now until the cinemas re-open too! There’s been a surge of films that have been backlogged and are releasing from July to the end of the year that we have not seen footage for. This includes films such as Halloween Kills, Dune, Death on the Nile and more. This means we are soon gonna get a wave of trailers for films that are finished and ready to release. This has made me think about movie trailers recently, and that’s what brings me here today.
Have you ever heard that trailer argument which goes along the lines of, ‘that showed too much story’ or ‘that was barely any footage’? There has always been that debate of revealing too much and revealing too little. A trailer is meant to sell you the idea of a film. Before seeing a trailer the look of a film is based around ideas and assumptions. A two-minute look is always enough to show off characters, plot, and tease us with enough details to want to see a film. The best company that makes trailers like this are Pixar. Remember seeing trailers for Up, The Incredibles and Wall-E without even knowing much of the plot? That’s an exciting feeling, and it also gets me excited to see Soul later this year.
Then on the other end of that argument, you have the, ‘it’s like I’ve just seen the film’, trailer. Trailers such as Hobbs and Shaw, or maybe even Transformers: The Last Knight. These trailers reveal key plot spoilers and make you wonder, is it worth seeing a full-length version of this trailer at around twenty-pound a ticket? I would argue that you should still see the film, solely for the purpose of spectacle, but there is a point here. Trailers should not spoil the story, only tease it!
Nowadays we don’t just have trailers, we have teasers, and teasers for teasers. What a world we’re living in, eh? Remember the teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens? That film was over a year away from coming out with little to no details regarding the characters or plot. And yet this teaser got us way more excited than full-length trailers for other big films coming around that same time. And that reason is hype! You want that hype to get us interested and invested, and to make us want to see a film at the cinema. We need something to look forward to!
That brings me back to the beginning of the blog. We are gonna experience a wave of movie trailers now in the next month, with The King’s Man and Greenland recently released, and they should all aim to get us hyped, excited and teased for what’s the come. Because I believe I speak for all of us when I say, we just want something to look forward to!
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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