Notes from a Festival Programmer: How Your Trailer May Kill Your Chances of Being Accepted
Movie Posters and Trailers. Two marketing tools that are nearly as old as cinema itself, with posters going back hundreds of years when you link its lineage to the theater.
Of the two, Poster has become a (lost) art form unto herself. Unlike her marketing sibling, Trailer, Poster can’t use clips from a film, or sound, or narration, to convey what a movie is or what it’s like. She knows that she can never–well not never, maybe rarely…like super duper rarely—distill a 90 minute story line down into one image. Astute, she’s skipped trying to tell you what the story is, and she’s honed in on recreating the experience of a film.
To that end, Poster has earned herself a reputation as having the ability to be iconic, even avant-garde. She can be mysterious, she can be daring, she can be bold, she can be sexy. She’s understood that when she does her job well, when she connects on an emotional level, a visceral response will entice even the jaded to look a bit deeper.
Her brother though, he’s a lucky ass bastard because he can use any clip he wants from a film. The problem is, Trailer often forgets that conveying the ups and downs of a 90 minute movie actually becomes both more complicated, simplified, and riskier.
The simple? The audience can now see the story, the genre and quality of a film even more clearly. “Hey, it’s a comedy, I’ll show a pratfall here.” “It’s a romance, here’s a guy yelling a man or woman’s name in the rain.” “Insert obligatory man jumping something dramatically with a determined face shot here to indicate there’ll be action.” Audiences see, they process, they understand…but, wait…
The complicated? Good films, and great films most of all, are rarely that easy to break down. The more reductive the clips, the more likely Trailer is to over or under sell what a film is. If he leaves out a key moment or three, he could entirely mislead an audience into thinking a romance is a comedy, or a drama film is all action. If what he creates doesn’t piece together just right, he can effectively tell you what the story is, yet bungle conveying what experiencing that story will be like.
The risky? Audiences can now make a decision if the film is something they one, want to see, two, will likely enjoy, and three, want to share–for good or bad–with others, even if it is or isn’t for them. And most important, Trailer can’t hide the quality of a film. Sub-par picture, sound, acting, that will always come through.
So what does that have to do with being accepted into a film festival? Programmers are no different than anyone else. Just as it is with audiences going to a local multiplex, we look at trailers and we instantly decide if films are ones we think we want to see, as programmers and as film lovers, and if we think will enjoy them. We can also decide if it’s a film we believe we can share with our festival audience, even if we personally aren’t reacting to the story or subject matter.
However a regular audience member isn’t watching 2000 films to decide which 140 they want to watch on Friday. And even if they skip a film, they can probably choose to take a chance on it at a later date. Or they may even have someone else persuade them that they should take a chance. Once we have formed an opinion, it’s been formed. It can be altered, it can be changed, but there’s almost no going back to one and reevaluating a film from scratch. As such, there’s a reason I and most of my screening committee try to avoid seeing or reading too much about some film if we can do that (it’s why we always want at least two eyes on a film).
Unfortunately, too many films submitted to festivals either have misleading trailers–stop playing by the Hollywood big budget marketing playbook and you would be much better off. Or they do not have strong trailers at all.
So far this season I’ve seen at least three films that a filmmaker sent me a trailer for that had me pumped, and I walked away a little disappointed that the film was nothing like the trailer. Those films aren’t out, but they are not as high on my list as when I watched the trailer. Based off the trailers alone, I could see telling audiences they need to see X film for Y reasons, because Y reasons was in the trailer and I know their interest would be piqued. Afterwards, I had to throw out Y reasons because that wasn’t what the films really were and to a greater extent not even about. Now my Z reasons are formed not by the film, but by me taking those Y reasons with me as I watched the film and having those shaped and reshaped as I react.
Film festivals, having festival in their descriptors, should be about experience first and foremost. It’s about sitting in the dark for hours and hours and being moved to action if it’s a social doc, to tears if it’s a drama or laughter if it’s a comedy. The films I personally react most strongly too, aren’t the ones I just think are just of great quality, it’s the ones I’m betting (rightly or wrongly) an audience will react positively to on an instinctual level.
As any film goer can tell you, there are few things more exciting than having a film exceed the promise of its trailer. They will also tell you that there are few things more disappointing than a film that doesn’t.
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True, making the perfect trailer is a fine line, a balance if you will. The 2000 films you see and some of the accompanying trailers are done by very creative novices. If everyone who ever made an indie film had an unlimited budget, then yeah, I’d expect their trailers to be as good as any studio would produce. That’s not the case. Making a trailer “Hollywood-esque” like the big studios make is not a bad idea if executed well. It shows the producer is keeping up with current trends.
I believe that you should always have the best quality film and trailer you can afford. Not everyone can make a sixty million dollar movie on a one hundred thousand dollar budget. I see that you posted what not to do in a trailer, will you follow up and explain what you and other festival programmers should see in a trailer at the indie level? Explain what you expect so these indie producers can give you what you are seeking?
I think trailers and posters really can help brand a movie. Keep in mind, I have seen different trailers for various demographics and everyone shows up to see the movie and no one is disappointed because they all got to see that what the trailer showed was in the movie and more!
See you at the pop-corn stand!
–Jay
You do have to be faithful to the spirit of the film when creating the trailer. Many trailer editors heads though are filled with the images of big budget films and it’s much easier to walk away with it in the trailer than in the complete film.
Myself, I’ve been guilty of amplifying the only little action scene of a short film in the trailer which did make a better trailer but the film itself was more creepy than action-packed. But I have also rearranged clips in the trailer to enhance the cuts of the film with great results to the audience, clarifying the story in a few shots.
– Sten
As a documentary film maker, I wonder about the trailers I send out, but I also wonder who is watching them, if I am the first film of the day or am I the umpteenth film he’s seen and is tired, or just isn’t interested in my subject matter. The sad thing for me is I’ve noticed in the films I have submitted, the ones that get accepted over the one’s that don’t is someone either has to be killed or maimed for a documentary is be accepted… Anyone else?