The (Awful) Truth About Trailers

I'm referring to movie trailers, not the kind that people live in (though I suspect that those, too, have their own awful truths).

After watching a trailer for a new movie the other day, I asked on an audio-video forum:

Why are trailers all the same these days - i.e., a staccato burst of very brief scenes with dramatic music/drums/shock or boom sounds that fade to black, to be followed by another scene like it, and then another, and then another, building to a crescendo before they announce the title and opening date?

Trailers like that are usually sufficient to turn me off a movie completely.

I received a quite revealing response:

It's because the trailers are cut by the same few people. It's literally all they do. I used to work with a guy who got a job doing exactly that. He soon got bored and went on to other things exactly because the studios all pretty much want the same thing in a trailer:

- Slow dramatic shots in the beginning that include wide shots of the environment and a few closeups of the cast.

- Fade out and in to some semi-quick shots (roughly 2-3 seconds each) as "trailer voice" sets up premise. Slow ominous drums punctuate with a slowly swelling orchestra. All shots must have movement to them until the point where you get the "sound bite" from a few characters saying something dramatic, like: "They won't take our freedom!"

- Fade out and fade in to shotgun succession of shots with rapid drums - any shots more than a half a second marked with a white flash between them.

- Grand pause.....

- Fade in and out of a few slow, dramatic shots of good and bad guys - heavy drum punctuates each one. Weapons must be displayed by all characters, unless the shot shows the helpless woman or an innocent child.

- Punctuate with final "Boo!" shot of an attack by the bad guy or wild animal.

- Title slate

To which I further responded:

No wonder so few movie trailers impress or entice me these days. What a bunch of cookie-cutter-brained idiots (not the trailer makers, the studio guys who say: "Make us this kind of trailer!"). These must be the same no-attention-span fools who make TV commercials and the news flashes for Fox News and CNN and MSNBC. Even movies with real character development come off appearing as "all action/no plot" in these trailers.

I've about had it with this trend towards trailers that make a movie look like it's "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," as well as with the incessant drumbeat of noise that assaults us everywhere we go. You can't go grocery (or any other) shopping without suffering from the Sound of Muzak (or worse), and browsing in a bookstore is no longer a quiet experience; you have to put up with music there, too. As for restaurants - Good Golly, Miss Molly!, you have to shout sometimes to be heard over the noise and flashing screens of sports channels and other garbage blaring from the ubiquitous LCD TVs.

This current generation will be brain-dead and deaf in 20 years.

[/grumpy old man rant]