Intriguing Pop Culture Editing
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:42 pm
Not the closest topic to fighting games, but they certainly influence our video editing choices - moreso than actual feature films do. In fact i've noticed that some of the best trailers come from otherwise mediocre movies. For example, two of my favorites are Sin City (which was a good movie) and 300 (which sucked). Both of them had a preview teaser and then a full theatrical trailer.
Sin City trailers | 300 trailers
Sin City was fun, it was tangled, it had a lot of surprises, and it had an unbelievable cast. But 300 ... as an action movie, nothing interesting happens after the first battle because they never bother to spend any time setting up a proper threat. It's the Spartans versus an entire bracket of cannon fodder until they reach finals and get swept. If something that one-dimensional doesn't even cut it as an action flick, then nothing is gonna save it.
The trailers though, those things are pure awesome. Something about Frank Miller's visual style and the way the directors managed to preserve it translates unbelievably well into hype machines. Whoever made those trailers also made two perfect choices for background music. In fact i think the first Sin City trailer is vastly superior to the second one simply because it lets the music loose instead of hiding it behind what would otherwise be very cool lines. But no matter how cool those lines are, they can't measure up to the anticipation you get from watching those actors' names appear one by one alongside their stylized images while that track is rocking in the background. Also i totally dig the custom "Coming Soon" storyboard at the end with the comic book rain backdrop, complete with thunder sound effects and everything
The same deal with the pair of 300 trailers. The first one is way better because they isolate two or three of the best lines in the movie, then let the music and the visuals do the talking. In the second one, once they start talking they will not shut the fuck up! In fact they outright waste the very best lines by mashing them all into one giant run-on sentence. The moral of the story is, don't try to summarize your entire plot simply because you have an extra minute to fill.
Finally, here's the trailer for Dark City, a movie that i enjoyed immensely:
Dark City trailer
It's not quite top tier as far as trailers go, but it does a great job of conveying the atmosphere of the film without giving away any spoilers (unless you watch too closely and memorize it prior to watching the film). There's even a custom studio logo. The best part is that it manages to avoid speech altogether. They could have easily fucked this up and made it unwatchable, but instead they left enough unsaid to keep us genuinely intrigued.
To summarize, here are my tier rankings for how information is conveyed in movie trailers:
Top tier: Dope music, minimal words taken directly from the movie or written in text
Middle tier: Dope music, an attempt to reconstruct the plot using sound bytes
99th tier: Getting some generic chump to tell us what the movie is about via cliche voiceover (can't stand it when they do that)
Sin City trailers | 300 trailers
Sin City was fun, it was tangled, it had a lot of surprises, and it had an unbelievable cast. But 300 ... as an action movie, nothing interesting happens after the first battle because they never bother to spend any time setting up a proper threat. It's the Spartans versus an entire bracket of cannon fodder until they reach finals and get swept. If something that one-dimensional doesn't even cut it as an action flick, then nothing is gonna save it.
The trailers though, those things are pure awesome. Something about Frank Miller's visual style and the way the directors managed to preserve it translates unbelievably well into hype machines. Whoever made those trailers also made two perfect choices for background music. In fact i think the first Sin City trailer is vastly superior to the second one simply because it lets the music loose instead of hiding it behind what would otherwise be very cool lines. But no matter how cool those lines are, they can't measure up to the anticipation you get from watching those actors' names appear one by one alongside their stylized images while that track is rocking in the background. Also i totally dig the custom "Coming Soon" storyboard at the end with the comic book rain backdrop, complete with thunder sound effects and everything
The same deal with the pair of 300 trailers. The first one is way better because they isolate two or three of the best lines in the movie, then let the music and the visuals do the talking. In the second one, once they start talking they will not shut the fuck up! In fact they outright waste the very best lines by mashing them all into one giant run-on sentence. The moral of the story is, don't try to summarize your entire plot simply because you have an extra minute to fill.
Finally, here's the trailer for Dark City, a movie that i enjoyed immensely:
Dark City trailer
It's not quite top tier as far as trailers go, but it does a great job of conveying the atmosphere of the film without giving away any spoilers (unless you watch too closely and memorize it prior to watching the film). There's even a custom studio logo. The best part is that it manages to avoid speech altogether. They could have easily fucked this up and made it unwatchable, but instead they left enough unsaid to keep us genuinely intrigued.
To summarize, here are my tier rankings for how information is conveyed in movie trailers:
Top tier: Dope music, minimal words taken directly from the movie or written in text
Middle tier: Dope music, an attempt to reconstruct the plot using sound bytes
99th tier: Getting some generic chump to tell us what the movie is about via cliche voiceover (can't stand it when they do that)