Before reading the rest of this blog, please view this trailer on youtube as a reference point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sfout_rgPSA
As we have seen in class, camera angles, techniques and inserting sound bytes during various scenes gives the viewer a very concrete impression of the tone/genre of the film. When we watch movies, if we remove ourselves by muting the film or only listening to the dialogue we can get different interpretations or feeling about what the movie is trying to bring out. With a bit of creative editing, switching soundtracks and rearranging scenes, The Shining (1980) starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall was transformed from a horror mystery film to a romantic comedy depicting an author looking for inspiration. In this version of the film, Nicholson is portraying his character Jack Torrance as a failing writer that cannot overcome a mental block who finds himself entangled with a single mother and her child.
Only ten seconds into the trailer we immediately have a sense of whimsical humor, with Nicholson smiling, the narrator using a jovial voice and violins softly playing in the background. Again these different sound bytes, and scene cuts gives the viewer a noticeably different idea of what The Shining is about. There’s a stark contrast to what a horror movie trailer should be like, with a dark mysterious voice for the narrator and a sense of anger or mystery. We are then introduced to the child actor who seems to be seeking a friend to play with, and then it quickly cuts to an adult trying to be friendly with him but failing miserably as we see in the child’s body language (taking a step back, and clearly not welcoming him with open arms or a smile). At roughly :38 seconds we hear some sentimental music indicating a mood change and then at :50 seconds we hear an upbeat guitar playing, deliberately instilling the idea that something positive has occured. The original Stephen King horror type movie no longer has this sense of mystery in the trailer but due to various edits and changes the trailer radiates a feeling that of a family movie or something more lighthearted and fun. We then see consecutive positive images from 1:01 to 1:16, images of Nicholson, Duvall and Lloyd (the child) having close intimate moments of smiles, hugs and kisses. There is just no sense or doubt that this movie is not family oriented, we’re given no cues that this is a horror movie but rather an appropriate motion picture for anyone to watch.
It’s incredible how splicing, transitioning and switching sound bytes and film clips around creates a completely different movie trailer. We’re constantly shown throughout this trailer that it is a movie that is appropriate for almost all audience ages. Through various scene cuts and images of friendliness and intimacy, I know myself as a viewer was given the impression that this was a trailer for a family movie, perhaps endorsed by Disney or another family brand.
For those interested in knowing the origins of this trailer, it was created by Robert Ryang who won the Association of Independent Creative Editors competition in New York in 2005. This video later went viral online through further expanding its popularity.
Have any of you come across alternate trailers of the movies you are creating scripts for? Have any of these trailers depicted a different type of genre? Perhaps romantic comedy or action adventure? If so please feel free to post a link in the comment section along with your response, maybe we can all take away different type of genre from the same type of trailer.
Write of the Living Dead 
Ninaad, that was a very funny trailer that you found for “The Shining” or “Shining. However, until the happy guitar starts and all of the happiness is displayed I couldn’t see much of a difference except for the narrator and the music. I have seen that movie (“The Shining” not “Shining”) several times and really like it, but now I want to watch this version. I think it would be funny if they did the whole movie as a sort of parody.
I did find a funny trailer for the movie that we choose for our commentary “Day of the Dead”. At least it was called a funny trailer. It didn’t splice scenes together or play happy music but it did feature a narrator. Although I didn’t think that the narrator’s purpose was to make the movie seem any different that it actually was. Rather, I think the trailer’s purpose was to give a short laugh to people who have seen the movie. The trailer shows a crowd sitting inside a theater to watch the movie and as the movie plays the camera finds Bub sitting in the audience chowing down on some popcorn. I thought that was kind of funny, but here’s the link so you can check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UScocb6l5hg
Let me know if you think the narrator is supposed to make the movie seem different. Oh, and lets finish the script. Have a good spring break.
I’ve only seen bits and parts of the shining but from what I remember the movie portrayed in the “trailer” was nothing like what I remember. I found one of the comments on the video to be really interesting “its amazing what a little editing and some cheesy music can do.” lukethegreat101 I think that summarizes this video perfectly. I think that a big part of why that trailer was so misleading was because of the narration. The narrator shapes the way the mind thinks and views the images. He was able to create the mindset that it was going to be a happy movie. That combined with the music really made it seem like a generic chick flick hollywood ever after movie.
I think a bigger part of this is how in many horror films there are many scenes that can be seen as friendly and amicable. In our film we noted how it took so long before there was any hint that it was going to be a horror film. If someone had made a trailer of the first 30 to 40 minutes of our movie it would have looked like a romantic comedy.
In ndavegwu’s post on The Shining, he discusses the use of camera angles and sound techniques thought out a movie’s trailer. Throughout the post, he suggests a viewer turn off the sound while watching the trailer. This ultimately leads to a very different viewing experience. Discussing the example of The Shining (1980), by switching out the sound tracks, the film depicts a totally different plot line, portraying a romantic comedy rather than a horror film.
Ndavegwu first explains that by changing the music to the trailer, the film seems to evoke a positive, light hearted feeling. This is obviously far from the mysterious, dark feelings of the actual film. I think its interesting how ndavegwu explains the film trailer to be filled with “hugs and kisses” as well as “a family movie” possibly created by Disney. My first impression of the Shining is a dark, terrifying movie that is definitely not appropriate for children. It is incredibly remarkable that just by changing the music, the effects of the film are so dramatically different—practically misleading.
In my own experience, my group watched the film The Birds several times without sound. This gave us a much stronger ability to analyze the camera angles, facial emotions of the characters, mise-en-scene, as well as other editing techniques. Specifically, we found that the mise-en-scene was very prominent in the film. The use of the color green throughout the entire film is a large driving force for visual motifs and how a viewer subliminally reads the film. The first few times viewing the film with sound, this was a concept I was not aware of. Taking away sound really made me focus on the visual aspects of the film rather than the story line. I believe to truly effectively analyze a film it is a necessity to watch it without sound. This way, a critique can focus on the director’s choices in regards to setting, visual motifs, and editing shots.
I found the trailer of “The Shining” to be very entertaining. It took a classic horror movie and turned its genre around. Carefully choosing clips from the film and then deciding in what order they should be played can change the whole tone of a movie. Add in happier music and a narrator and you’ve possibly got a whole other film. I watched “The Shining” a long time ago and I remember some of the scenes that were used in the trailer. They were obviously scary to me, but this trailer with its narration and music changed the whole context of film so it could be amusing. Watching this trailer reminded me of the honest trailers on Youtube. These trailers are parodies of popular movies today. They add in a narrator and take clips from the film their parodying as it fits in their trailer. I also came across this video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic. It does the opposite of what “The Shining” trailer does. This video takes a happy movie (Mary Poppins) and using editing to turn it into a scary trailer.
So far, my only exposure to “The Shining” has been The Simpsons’ Tree House of Horror parody (the best part of which you can see here, for those unfortunate enough to have never seen it before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yGJGTjV2WE), so when I followed the link, I was quite confused. I remember thinking, before even reading the rest of the post, that this didn’t seem right. “The Shining,” I thought, was supposed to be a horror film, wasn’t it? Yet this seemed like a fluffy family comedy. To me, the fact that I had these thoughts before reading the post just proves ndavegwu’s point more. It’s amazing how a simple bit of scene splicing and music mix-up can completely twist a movie preview around, for better or worse.
Now consider how important it is for an official trailer. The examples in the post and other comments are meant for fun, of course. But think about how the real trailers affect your choice to see something. Have you ever watched a trailer that made a movie seem good, but then you regretted watching it? Or, alternatively, have you seen a trailer that has made you doubt the quality of a film, but after hearing by word of mouth how good it is, you end up seeing it and wishing you had seen it sooner? There are many movies that went underrated at the box office just because the people in charge of the trailers didn’t do the job as well as they could. I think it’s amazing how a bit of editing can make, break, or twist our perceptions of a movie long before we even see it.
I was able to find two different trailors for my movie, Day of the Dead.
While neither of these trailors pretends to be for something other than a horror movie, they both have very distinct styles. The first trailor was incredibly basic to say the least. It started by building up George Romero as the director and tries to use his prestige to garner attention. Then it was simply a bunch of short sequences from the movie itself edited together with no respect to actual chronology as many trailors even today tend to do.
The second however, which I personally liked more, was a bit more creative in its technique and even tried to add a bit of humor. While in its essence it too was simply a series of scenes from the movie and a buildup of Romero as the director, It also employed a narrator in order to up suspense throughout. While I never really noticed this before, I now realize I definitely do prefer trailors that include this sort of overaching explanatory voice rather than simply poorly picked scenes from a movie. It helps with the transition and gives more purpose to the movie in question. You can watch the two trailors yourself and see if you agree with me or not if you so please.
The impact of audio is the biggest point to be made by the spoof trailer. I remember as a little kid covering my ears whenever I thought something scary was going to come up in a movie. If I avoid the sound, I thought to myself, I can still watch and not seem scared. More often than not, suspenseful music will play in the background, building and building, until the climax of the scene occurs. Take away the music, and we might just see a person walking around a house carelessly and ultimately running into the monster. The music and audio in the background is key to evoke emotion in the audience. The soundtrack tells us what to feel at what time, and how intensely to feel it.
When I watched my movie, The Exorcist, a casual walking scene often carried an eerie piano background, giving the impression that the character was walking towards something evil, or the demon was watching. If I put the movie on mute, and I paid attention to the camera angles, all the fear and scary emotions left me. I no longer clung to my seat whenever Regan lashed out as the demon. Now I simply noted the angle of the camera or the shadows. Music keeps us enthralled in the movie.
I really enjoyed the fake trailer provided for “The Shining.” At first while watching the trailer, I was a bit confused. I have never seen the entire film from beginning to end, only different parts, and thus was not able to spot that the trailer was a spoof immediately. I knew something was off, especially with the tone in the narrator’s voice, and the apparent lack of horror and suspense in the scenes that were shown in the first half of the trailer, but I couldn’t tell that it was going to be a complete spoof on the 1980 film starring Jack Nicholson. For me, it really wasn’t until Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” began to play that I knew for sure that the trailer was a spoof.
This trailer truly goes to show just how much a film can be manipulated by different cuts, different camera angles, and different sound techniques. Now having the basic knowledge of film analysis from UW, watching this video, or really any movie to television show, I view it in a completely different way. Now, I can pick up on different techniques that are used by directors, filmmakers, and editors, and see and analyze how they change the the complete nature of a film. The knowledge of these techniques forces me to not be able to watch a film the same way again–instead I will subconsciously analyze a film that I am presented, based upon these popular film techniques.
This trailer confused me a lot at first. I have never seen the shining so i was confused after watching the trailer because the trailer made the film seem so innocent and for all ages. I thought this movie was a horror film and very scary from what ive been told but this trailer seemed so friendly, and i would never suspect the movie of being scary or anything. It is amazing how editing can change the movie so much and change the way you think of it. Whoever made this fake trailer seems to know how to edit and can morph you into thinking pretty much anything. Along with the editing the cheery music in the background (not sure if cheery is a real word) made the film seem even more innocent. From watching that trailer i would guess the shining is about nothing really but is appropriate for all ages and that is crazy because that is totally not what the shining is about.
original trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz719b9QUqY
“updated” trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdWTyYBvg-8
I wasn’t able to find any actual parodies of the trailer for “Psycho”, but I did manage to find an interesting “updated” trailer. This “updated” trailer isn’t attempting give a false impression of the film, like Ninaad’s trailer, but attempts to modernize the trailer. As trailers are created to advertise the film, the updated trailer is designed to appeal to modern tastes. In the current age of fast paced, heart pounding horror films, trailers are typically visually and auditorily shocking.
Visually, the new trailer exploits the black and white color scheme by selectively adding red filters to the original film, highlighting certain scenes. Notably, the new trailer injects sex appeal into the film by putting a larger emphasis on the first scene, which is the only scene where sex is prevalent. The new trailer contains far more cuts, jumping back and forth through the film quickly. As someone who has watched the film countless times, the new sequence of cuts seems to reveal more of the story, but I think to a new viewer, the pace and disorder of the cuts likely eliminates any spoilers which may ruin the film for a first time viewer.
Auditorily, the new trailer primarily uses the most anxiety producing dialog from the film, much of which is either angry, fearful, or simply chilling. As the trailer progresses, the background music steadily increases in pace and decibels, much like the well known “Inception” trailer, which has deafening music which builds throughout the trailer.
You could likely spend an entire semester analyzing the cultural and technical differences between trailers from the 60s and those from 2010’s, and I imagine many would criticize the new style of trailers as lacking in nuance or substance, and designed for the lowest common denominator of movie viewers, but they are accurate as many new films do lack nuance or substance.
This just makes me think about how important presentation is above all else. if you have cheerful music it can make a normally frightening scene more funny. i have seen people do the opposite and take an animated movie and give it serious music and cut the clips up differently to make it look like something its not. Hollywood is all about presentation and appealing to the people who you think are going to come see your movie.