Research: teasing it up: case studies

Although by default, a trailer/teaser is supposed to draw the audience to the final product by compressing a great deal of image into 2-2.30 minutes. A good trailer is meant to provide some information on the final product without giving away too much at the same time.

Since I am meant to compress 2.30 minutes into a minute (or so), I decided to add something more to it.

There have been some examples of the trailers not being actual previews or a series of dynamic cuts and voice overs.

I chose several examples from the list on ifc.com (’50 greatest trailers ever made’).

My choice was mainly reasoned whether I have seen the movie myself – how much content has the trailer showed in accordance to the actual movie is the key factor for me.

1. Cloverfield.

(from ifc.com)

Surprise is key to the “Cloverfield” teaser, which — without any marketable stars to pivot its sales pitch around — instead expertly plays up its film’s reality-caught-on-tape conceit. Opening with home movie footage of a Manhattan loft party in which revelers wish their friend Rob a fond farewell, the trailer immediately intrigues by positing a familiar scene of merry 20-somethings that could just as easily be the set-up for an indie rom-com or a serial killer thriller.

Couching its action in the sweetly ordinary is the trailer’s (as well as the film’s) grand stroke of inspiration, creating such relatable, everyday circumstances that the sudden mysterious roar that interrupts the festivities — and the subsequent, fiery explosion spied from the building’s rooftop — proves fantastically chilling. From there, one is jump-cut-plunged into an unexpected scene of chaotic monster mash terror that, taking a page from “Independence Day”’s monuments-loving playbook, culminates with one of the most chilling money shots — Wait, did something just throw that into the street? — in trailer history. There’s nary a mention of a title, in part because one wasn’t finalized yet, but also because the creators seemed perfectly confident that a release date was all that was necessary. –Nick Schager

2. Independence day

Watching the “Independence Day” teaser today, it’s impossible not to note its influence on subsequent summer blockbusters, its every facet now a bedrock cliché of the season’s cinematic entertainment. In quick, minimalistic bursts, the trailer provides the only information one requires. On July 2nd — cut to shots of enormous, ominous shadows covering beloved national monuments like the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial — “They Arrive.” Then, there are multiple shots of diverse citizens turning their eyes upward to stare in horrified awe at the sky, images that stoke the central mystery while simultaneously presenting a state of affairs the audience can naturally project themselves into.

On July 3rd, “They Attack,” a message that leads directly into the unforgettable sight of the White House being obliterated by a UFO laser blast. Still need more enticement to see the film? July 4th is “The Day We Fight Back”! Portentous tease + cataclysmic payoff + promise of all-out retribution: Roland Emmerich’s trailer laid out, for a generation of filmmakers to come, the surefire recipe for marketing a big-budget sci-fi spectacle. –Nick Schager

The independence day featured hardly any information other than the key dates and the release. It didn’t list the main characters, the key actors. What a build-up!

3. Alien

Masterfully cut and artful to boot, the first glimpse of Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-horror classic features not a single word of dialogue and begins in abstract: a ride through a star field, a hover above some sort of moon rock, blocky shapes that slowly materialize into the letters of the title, craggy landscape traversed with a macro lens before pulling back to clarify what lies on that cratered surface — the egg of an alien life form. It cracks open, releasing an ill-omened white light and the high-pitched alarm (an animalistic squeal?) that unnerves throughout the rest of the trailer.

Astronauts tiptoe into an extraterrestrial ship, crosscut with Sigourney Weaver inexplicably running through corridors, with confounding/enticing images flashing almost subliminally in between (a space crew awakening from hyper-sleep, Harry Dean Stanton’s bewildered close-up) before all hell breaks loose (an obscured Ian Holm spurting milky blood, a cat hissing, a never-before-seen “face hugger” in a frenzy). From above the planet, an onscreen title ultimately seals the deal, seeming all the more foreboding for the vaccuum of diegetic sound that came before it: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” It’s one of the most famous taglines of all time.

4. Unbreakable

Compared to the breakneck pace of most modern trailers, the teaser for M. Night Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable” feels deliberately deliberate; heavy on atmosphere, light on edits. Instead of providing little bits from many scenes, it gives us a lot of just one, in which Bruce Willis learns that he’s the only survivor of a horrific train crash. It’s like a nightmare in miniature: disturbingly high pitched noises echoing through the soundtrack, repeated fade outs to black, characters speaking in hushed tones, the frequent image of a spinning fragment of broken glass. The cutting rhythm is unsettling and unusual. We spend uncomfortably lengthy stretches on some shots and near-subliminal ones on others. In a very short amount of time, this trailer convinces us this is one creepy friggin’ movie.

The incredible success of “The Sixth Sense” made Shyamalan the unlikeliest of household names, and with this follow-up it was imperative that he prove he wasn’t simply a flash in the pan. Because of “The Sixth Sense”‘s popularity, there was already huge interest in his next project, so the “Unbreakable” teaser didn’t have to excite the audience so much as reassure them. Ironically, the spot’s unorthodox and intensely moody aesthetic did just that. 

5. Citizen Kane

When you have arguably the greatest film of all time on your hands, it shouldn’t be hard to cut an appealing trailer, but Orson Welles doesn’t show a frame of the actual film, nor does he show himself playing the titular newspaperman Charles Foster Kane once — in fact, Kane is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Welles used only his stentorian voice to introduce the players of the Mercury Theatre like Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead in a playful tour of the RKO Studios soundstage, before admitting about his own character: “I don’t know how to tell you about him. There’s so many things to say.” So he defers to a montage of “he said, she said” scenes from the film about his controversial protagonist, resulting in the best kind of tease, even with a little sex appeal, courtesy of some chorus girls Welles throws in for “ballyhoo.” As Joe Dante, director of “Gremlins” and creator of the invaluable site Trailers From Hell, who offered us his own favorite picks to take into consideration for this list, pointed out, “Just as he challenged the bromides of Hollywood filmmaking, Orson Welles created one of the most iconoclastic trailers ever, over which the RKO marketing department must have torn their hair out. It captures the brash tone of the entire rule-breaking enterprise perfectly

Citizen Kane’s trailer revealed every character except the main one.

The examples below show that trailer is not necessarily a series of fast paced sequences with the same sort of voice-over, a series of CGI effects or a sequence of emotional stills for romantic comedies. There is more to it, if one is so inclined.