Considering the trailer is marketing for the movie, it's logical that, in this particular case, it focuses on Cole's predicament because that's the hook. It's the supernatural aspect of the story that's going to get butts into the seats. That being said, I think it's very worthwhile to consider doing a trailer analysis because there's something to be said about their evolution as well: I've noticed many aim for a midpoint, giving one the "external" story for the first half, then flipping into the internal story. I noticed this while, of all things, viewing the trailer for the documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil (great documentary, by the way). I thought, wow, they're selling this as something humorous at first, but then you get a sense of the emotional journey as well. Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF4H8lB2Y_o The midpoint happens at... well, the midpoint. We see an intro, the complications, the midpoint, the emotional journey, and then what appears to be the promise of some personal triumph. Now watch this trailer, almost the same exact length, with almost the same exact beats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4QPVo0UIzc So there's my two trailers pitching my two cents: I say go for it! Great idea.

Absolutely enthusiastic about breaking down trailer shot by shot. Am in the middle of an expanded scene breakdown. I'm going to cut a trailer before I get started on the script.

I think a trailer breakdown idea is fascinating, and provides an instant analysis gratification, always looking for that. :) Q. Does the director/editor of a film create the trailer or is that outsourced? Who gets final approval? Director? Producer? Studio?

You know I'm up for it. It would be useful to figure out a good way to present the results though. First it took way longer than I thought it would. Even having just seen the movie. The main issue was the the images cut faster than the dialogue. I tried to illustrate this by attaching the dialogue at the end of certain images. Not completely accurate, but hopefully close. I also noticed--and I suspect it might be limited to this film--that there were what I considered a lot of fade outs breaking up the trailer. I didn't make use of them or even note them, but they felt like sentences in a paragraph. Maybe something like the following would work, though I'm not sure it is good to separate the images and dialogue. Might be nice to capture the sounds. 1:43 Images--Malcolm/someone almost gets hit by a car/door RATTLING from Cole BANGING on the other side/Malcolm and Anna in bedroom/Vincent FIRES Dialogue--None FADE TO WHITE 1:46 (Example only--not sure the fade is to white, though there are both kinds in the trailer.)

Trailers, huh. Although I do believe it's important to discuss the marketing aspect of movie making, I'm not so sure I see the benefit of doing a shot by shot breakdown of each trailer. The one good thing I can see with that is that we'd get a detailed list of which characters and story points the particular trailer in question focuses on, and that could be used for further discussions. However, a marketing campaign is so much more than just one trailer. There's usually a shorter length teaser trailer and then one, two or three full-length domestic trailers. There are TV spots that are tailored for various markets, both geographical such as the different states, regional, etc., and different media like select TV channels, internet, radio and the like. TV spots in Utah might focus on different characters or different story aspects than spots running in Los Angeles or New York. A spot running during primetime might look different than a spot running during daytime programming depending on the target audience. And that's not even including international. And print campaigns can tell us a lot as well. The one-sheet for Midnight In Paris for example did a great job of conveying the idea and feel of the film (our protagonist by himself against a magical backdrop.) Better than the trailers even, in my opinion. I think it would be beneficial to look at how a film is marketed, yes, but in my opinion we should take a more general look at what the studios is trying to sell to the audience. It's not in the details, really. The Sixth Sense breakdown is interesting but if we look at that trailer, what is it selling us? It's selling us a supernatural thriller with a kid. And Bruce Willis is in it. The actual story is secondary. We get the premise: "A boy who can see dead people." But more importantly, we get an overall feel for what the movie is. The trailer sets the tone, the mood, the feel of the movie. It's saying “This is what you can expect when you go see this movie.” The same but different. “If you like supernatural thrillers, you'll love The Sixth Sense!” A trailer is a lot like a travel commercial. Come to Jamaica! We have beautiful beaches, luxurious hotels with a friendly staff, smiling locals and sunshine galore. Great for the whole family! There's also an awesome nightclub scene. It sells you an idea, a feeling, a mood. The focus of most trailers is not the story per se, but to convey to the audience what they should expect when seeing the film. “You'll be in this world for two hours.” If it's a comedy, you should expect to laugh your ass off. If it's horror film, you will be scared to death. The trailer moments are highlights of the elements that will sell a particular genre, mood and feel. Are you writing a comedy in the style of The Hangover or Animal House? Then you better have not only great one-liners but also physical comedy that will look great on screen. See the Bridesmaids trailer for reference. An action flick? You'll need great set-pieces that will make the audience walk out of the theatre and talk about those. Fans of that particular genre will not give a hoot about your hero saving his marriage. They will care about how fucking cool it was when that huge robot exploded! That's a trailer moment. See the Transformers and Battleship trailers for reference. And if the moment is really good, it will just hook the audience. Check out the trailer for Cloverfield. They don't show the monster, we don't know what the hell is going on, and then BAM! The head of Lady Liberty comes flying towards us. That shot made me wanna go see the movie. It was something I'd never seen before and made me go WTF?! Talk about a trailer moment. That shot alone could have sold the movie. It's visual. It's cinematic. It looks great on screen and it's unexpected. A suspense film? Romantic Comedy? Western? Each of these genres have their own type of trailer moments. As writers, it behooves us to keep this in mind if we want to write commercial scripts because producers will ask for these. These moments help sell the movie. It will make the studios' work easier and it will show the producers that we as a writers understand that this is a business after all and we are in this together to get people to buy tickets. It's the same reason that having a great premise and a solid logline is important for the type of movies Hollywood likes to make. It's easy to grasp. It's easy to sell. It's sad, I know. I wish we could just concentrate on writing great stories and hope that people will go see the films anyway. In any case, it is my view that analyzing trailers could be beneficial if we look at the overall picture and not get bogged down in the details. Trailers and marketing campaigns are painted with broad strokes. We have to look at the general feel of the trailer, the music choice, what aspect of the story is the focus, what genre are they selling, things like that, not particulars like individual shots.

I'm glad I didn't see any trailers or TV spots before I watched the movie. At first I thought that Cole's ability had something to do with involuntary time travel (the voices when the bullies lock him in the closet seemed to me to come from an earlier time, as they well might have anyway). So for people who have seen the trailer, the first part of the movie, where we try to find out what's going on with Cole, might seem slow and overlong. Do the marketers take such things into account when they decide to give away secrets in the trailer?

Lee, I have been around and around on this topic with Hwood marketing people including a good friend who helps to coordinate campaigns for most Sony movies. And the conventional wisdom among these folks is that most consumers like to have trailers that convey key elements of the plot, not just provide tone, feel and atmosphere, but literally give away some of the most compelling events and dynamics. I have pointed out the most egregious examples of trailer spoilage including this post about Letter to Juliet, which gives away the entire plot, major beat by major beat. It doesn't matter. In the case of Juliet, what I'm told is that tween and young teen girls want to know as much of the story beforehand, this actually motivates them more to go see the movie. Personally I hate trailers that give away too much, but then I'm not a tween girl, or at least not the last time I checked. My hunch is that marketeers will tend to go for 'more is better than less' in a frantic attempt to make an impression... any impression on consumers who are blanketed with an exceptionally noisy advertising marketplace nowadays.

I think the trailer for What Lies Beneath was blasted by some for revealing too much. Either way, the 1st half of the movie was a big red herring which ultimately felt like it had nothing to do with the rest of the story. Who know, perhaps that's why a key twist was revealed.

That's the problem with most romantic comedies/romantic dramas like Letters to Juliet: we already know the outcome. Of course they will find love in the end. That's why people go see these types of movies. They want to be in that world for 105 minutes. And quite frankly, that movie didn't have much going for it other than beautiful scenery and beautiful actors. Lorenzo riding on that horse towards Vanessa Redgrave was quite possibly the only shot in the movie that looked and felt romantic. They sort of had to put that in the trailer to show that this was a romance. One man's spoiler is another man's hook, I guess. Or something like that. The problem lies in the storytelling itself, then. A formulaic story will get a formulaic trailer? Could we guess the outcome of the story after watching The Sixth Sense trailer? No. Because the story itself is not predictable. I agree with you about hating trailers that give away too much. But can we detect some sort of pattern? Are trailers that give away too much targeted to a certain demographic? I haven't done any research on this, but my gut tells me that the more "adult" oriented the film, the less plot is revealed. And it could be as simple as those kinds of movies are generally more unpredictable plotwise than movies for younger audiences. That would make an interesting study. And pardon my long rant earlier. I should edit these comments before I post them, but I hate rewriting.

I hear what Teddy is saying, and there were two shorter spots on the DVD for comparison. I also agree the marketing campaign may not tell you much about the story. But his mention of Lady Liberty illustrates what might be the main value of studying trailers. Viewing them in the context of the final film and the script should make us more attuned to writing visually. Shyamalan talked about using red as a visual reference in the film. I can't say that jumped out reading the script, but in the trailer the red balloon and the pumpkin--which I don't remember being in the script--made a strange impression. Perhaps what Scott is saying when he asks a writer to think of the trailer moments is to think what pieces of the script leap out at you visually, like Lady Liberty.

Rants can be good. Blow off steam here so you don't go take it out on the slow-moving Prius on the 405.

Visual moments would be one thing to consider, that's for sure. A lot depends upon genre. If it's a comedy, clearly you're looking to spotlight funny moments and lines. Thriller, scary moments. And don't forget set pieces, those big sets of scenes that we know will involve several minutes of screen time leading to significant results. Classic example: The football stadium scene that serves as a framing device for the second trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. Hollywood's first great producer Irving Thalberg used to tell the stable of writers at MGM, "Give me 5 great moments, and I'll make a hit movie." That's what studio execs are looking for in large part when they talk about 'trailer moments.'

Research shows we may enjoy stories more when we know the endings! From the National Post: Bruce Willis is dead. Edward Norton is Tyler Durden. Clint Eastwood pulls the plug: As annoying as it can be, finding out how films end may not be such a downer after all. According to research carried out at UC San Diego, spoilers may actually enhance our enjoyment. Nicholas Christenfeld, a professor of psychology at the California university, and his student Jonathan Leavitt recently tested the effect of spoilers using short stories, and their results will be published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science. The study had three groups of participants: one that read the stories unaltered, one that read versions of the stories that had spoilers embedded in them, and one that was given a spoiler paragraph before they even started the story. Although the embedded paragraph had no effect, it turns out that the subjects who knew how the stories would end before picking them up enjoyed them the most. “The margin’s small,” says Christenfeld, referring to enjoyment numbers. “It’s not a huge effect — it’s not the case that you make people indifferent or ecstatic with spoilers. But, there’s a significant uptick in pleasure on the 10-point scale. … And [participants are] reading the exact same story, so any movement is interesting, and of course, this is in the opposite direction from what you’d expect.”

Wow, that is really interesting. Is that suggesting the anticipation of knowing what's coming translates into pleasure when they actually experience it? Or when someone is surprised by a twist ending, that negatively impacts them? In any event, that's a really great find, Nadria. I may have to do a GITS post using that, if you don't mind, a big Hat Tip to you, of course, if I do.

Scott, you already did a post about this last year: http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2011/08/spoilers-dont-spoil-anything.html

Gosh, Teddy, you have a better memory than I do. But I suppose with over 8,000 posts, I'm bound to forget a few. Thanks for posting as it's relevant to our discussion.

Ha! Yeah, I knew I had read about that somewhere previously. It just seemed relevant now. I don't think we're negatively impacted by surprise endings. Maybe it's more of that feeling of enjoying the journey without having to anticipate the end. My mom, for instance, always turns to the back of a book and reads the ending to decide if she wants to buy it. She just likes knowing what's going to happen.