• WTF happened to movie trailers ? •

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by amoergosum, Apr 22, 2014.

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  1. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    No, I mean a bad, bad film. Transformers at least delivered the amount of action and humor the audience wanted. It just didn't make any sense. I wouldn't consider the Faster & Furious movies great cinema, either, but it delivers on what it sets out to do. The problem is when you set out to make an action/adventure/comedy and it fails on one or two of these to a spectacular degree. Cowboys & Aliens, John Carter, and Lone Ranger are three examples where if you just look at the subject matter and the core idea, I can see where a lot of executives would say, "wow! Can't miss!" But clearly in the execution, all three films fell flat.

    Transcendence is a recent example where you could sell it to the execs by saying, "it's kind of an updated version of The Matrix, where you have dying scientist Johnny Depp upload his consciousness to a computer, living on in software, but threatening to change all of human evolution." On the surface, it sounds great... but it was a turkey and is already the biggest bomb of the year. (So far...)

    All the '40s and 50's trailers I've seen look very dupey, plus there's tons of optical moves going on, so I don't think the need to make a dupe of 100' or 200' of film mattered worth a damn. Nobody cared. It cost about $200 back then. I think this rumor is false... but I don't dispute there are sometimes alternate angles and takes in trailers -- for all movies. This particularly happens when half of a line of dialogue falls over another character, which may work in the finished film but not in a standalone trailer. I have personally had to fish for missing shots to fill in the exact same shot and same dialogue from a take that's 90% identical to what's in the final film in order to build a trailer.

    In our case, we were using IPs struck from the camera negative, which was done before the negative was cut. It's also trivial nowadays since everything is digital -- even when the movie is shot on film, there's almost always digital scans being done, so technically, there are no more dupes.
     
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  2. RickH

    RickH Connoisseur of deep album cuts

    Location:
    Raleigh, NC
    The trailer for The Conjuring last year really spoiled the hell out of the scene with the clapping ghostly hands next to Lili Taylor holding the candle. That scene would have been SO much freakier had I not seen it in the trailer first.
     
  3. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    If you're saying "Cowboys", "Carter" and "Lone Ranger" were "bad, bad films" that were worse than the "Transformers" flicks... well, there we'll disagree. I don't like any of those first three, but I don't think any of them are crummier than the 3 "Transformers" movies.

    There are plenty of "bad, bad movies" IMO that make lots of money. The stinkin' "Paranormal Activity" franchise continues to churn profits and those movies have been mostly terrible...
     
  4. allnoyz

    allnoyz Forum Resident

    Police Academy...
     
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  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Well... I think we're splitting hairs on "horrible" vs. "awful" vs. "horrendous." They're all different degrees of bad.

    Those are pretty bad. My joke with the first one was, "it's 15 minutes of sheer terror, interspersed with about 80 minutes of absolute boredom, very badly shot and recorded." I think the follow-up movies were more of the same. The only two "found footage" movies I saw that I felt were pretty good as films were Cloverfield and Chronicle, and they spent a lot of money to make sure the effects were totally up to the level of realism of the rest of the film. I just rewatched Chronicle the other day on cable and was surprised by how well it held up.
     
  6. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Germany
    Here's a recent example of why you shouldn't watch trailers...watch this review of Spider-Man 2
    [at 3:39 & 6:37] >>>

     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2014
  7. SonOfAlerik

    SonOfAlerik Forum Resident

    Location:
    Westland, MI USA
    Back in the late 90's when I first got on the internet I used to download as many trailers as possible. I guess you could say I was collecting them. I enjoyed trying to track down the ones from some of my favorite films over the years. I probably have a 100 discs full of them. But in the last 7 years or so I haven't saved many at all. There aren't that many new films that I would want to save them. Even for the recent films I enjoy.
     
  8. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I don't think "Paranormal Activity" even had 15 minutes of terror - maybe 15 seconds, tops! :D

    Funny - I watched "Devil's Due", another bad "found footage" flick, and mentioned in my review that "Cloverfield" is the only FF flick I really like. Never saw "Chronicle"...
     
  9. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Chronicle is a surprisingly good little film, plus it cost $10M and made $127M worldwide, which is an enormous hit by any measure. Go rent it -- I'll personally refund your money if you hate it. This is an example of a simple premise (three high school friends get superpowers after encountering a mysterious rock in the woods) that gets very, very complicated very quickly, and the climax is unexpectedly emotional.
     
    PhantomStranger likes this.
  10. Chronicle was an excellent take on how modern teenagers would attempt to cope with superpowers. It's the reason why they made its star the new face of the Fantastic Four franchise.
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Is he? I thought the star was the Green Goblin in the new Spiderman movie!
     
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  12. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Germany
    The new Interstellar trailer is great...that's how you do it. And it doesn't reveal too much. I actually want to see the movie now.
    Good job!

     
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  13. allnoyz

    allnoyz Forum Resident

    That DOES look cool! Nolan is on quite a hot streak.
     
  14. HiredGoon

    HiredGoon Forum Resident

    It reveals enough, IMHO: Rust Cole, former Engineer (that is no way a Foreshadowing), and sole protector of his Cute Kids (one of whom is named after Murphy's Law, which is also no way a Foreshadowing), enjoys a pastoral existence out in the Scary Cornfields (that is no way a rip-off of Signs), but the planet is Running Out Of Food, and after Some Calamities, is reluctantly convinced by Alfred The Butler that he is Our Only Hope and takes off into the inky void to Save The Day, leaving his Cute Kids behind. Will he make it back to his Cute Kids? Or will he make a Noble Sacrifice and enter Another Plane Of Existence in a Special Effects Extravaganza that is no way a rip-off of Contact and 2001?

    --Geoff
     
  15. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    I've noticed before the main feature's about to begin, the last trailer they show is the film your about to watch ie; the main feature. Talking about a anti-climax. Of for my kool aid now.:)
     
  16. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I try to avoid them whenever possible...
     
  17. ChadHahn

    ChadHahn Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ, USA
    The part that stuck with me was the sound of the hot boilers as they were being submerged.

    I didn't care much for the first part but the sinking was really well done. Lots of great details.

    Chad
     
  18. ChadHahn

    ChadHahn Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ, USA
    Wasn't Psycho the first movie where they wouldn't let you in while the movie was in progress? Before then, people could buy a ticket, go in and watch until they saw the whole things and saying, "I think this is where we came in." would get up and leave. So showing the ending didn't have quite the same impact as in modern times.

    Chad
     
  19. JerolW

    JerolW Senior Member

    I watch them on AXS.

    jerol
     
  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yes, Hitchcock admonished audiences not to reveal the ending to anybody. Here he is reminding people:

    [​IMG]
     
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  21. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Germany
    This post made it to the front page of REDDIT:

    [​IMG]
     
  22. Graham

    Graham Senior Member

    Location:
    Perth, Australia
    I'm sure this scene and others are in a director's cut on DVD. I've certainly seen the campfire scene.
     
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