So who else has seen a movie and felt completely mislead by the trailer you'd seen for it beforehand? I'm sometimes amazed, even now, of just how important movie trailers are to get right, and easy they are to manipulate. Seriously, it's so easy to make a mediocre movie look fun or a good movie look boring, to say nothing of how easy it is to even switch the genre. In cooking, it's said 'the first bite is with the eye', meaning the appearance of the food can set up a person's expectation for the taste, and for me, the trailer is that same idea for the film. It takes a lot of skill to make a good trailer that offers enough to inform the viewer of what the plot is without giving away too much of the good stuff, and keeping it all under three minutes.
I was just reminded of this in part because of the trailers I'd been seeing for Jennifer's Body and then reading about what the writer and director have been saying about it, along with other people either anticipating it or who have seen it. And I was reminded again today about it because of browsing through my Youtube favorites and seeing how many fake movie trailers I had in there. There are some really well-made ones there, and probably still more I don't know about. I figured I'd share some of my favorites, since all my other blog posts are half-finished and I'm still moving. (Sorry for the links instead of imbedded videos, I just got a laptop and for some reason can't figure out how to copy the entire imbed code.)
The Shining as a romantic comedy.
Mary Poppins as a horror movie.
A Goofy Movie if it had been directed by David Lynch.
Titanic 2, featuring footage and dialogue from possibly every movie ever made.
Just to add to your list. My absoultely favorite recut trailer is for The Wickerman.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_mW8mBzmHo
Mostly because I really do think it works better as a comedy
I've never even seen that movie, but I was still laughing at that preview. That was awesome. XD
ReplyDeleteOne of the more entertaining examples of what official movie trailers can do would be the two main trailers they released for The Brave One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_PT4zvbhFw, and then http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6NO8svBSvE.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I like to combine the audio from movie trailers with footage from another source to imply a hypothetical plot that's a fusion of the two. Best example I can offer might be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORy8sNhzFNs.
I like the examples you sent for The Brave One-- the first implies more of a character-driven piece, where the second one plays it more like a shoot-em-up revenge movie. The fact that the film is both isn't that obvious from either trailer, and they're clearly made to appeal to different potential viewers.
ReplyDeleteThe splicing one audio onto a different visual, I've seen before, but it was done very well that that example. Thanks for sharing it. :)