Stimulating Pixels

A few weeks ago I saw the 30 second teaser trailer for “Taken“. All I really got out of it was:

• Liam Neeson plays a dad who is some kind of former Secret Agent or Mr. Wolf.
• His daughter get kidnapped by some bad guys
• Liam is a stone cold badass and is gonna get medieval all over the kidnapper’s asses.

That was it, but it was enough. My interest was piqued. I was ready to spend $10 to see the film in the theater instead of waiting for it to come to NetFlix. Good job marketing team. At least until yesterday, when I caught one of the other “full” trailers.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The movie still looked like something I’d like to see. The problem is I’m pretty sure I’ve now seen the entire movie. Or, at least all the key scenes and good parts. Now I definitely won’t be seeing it in the theater. The studio spent extra money to turn me off from their film.

This is nothing new. As the studios spend increasing amounts of money creating films, pressure to make sure they are hits grows. The marketing guys get the call and put more and more scenes out to try to grow interest to get more butts in seats. I expect that they have run the numbers and their math points to this strategy working. With my focus group of one, I can tell you that it backfires way more often than not.

Another side to this that I wonder about is how directors feel about so much of their films being broadcast before the are even released. If I were in their shoes it would piss me off. After spending a huge amount of time and energy to create a piece of art, I can’t imagine any other possible reaction when you see some of the best parts being ripped out, slapped back together in a 3 minute montage and shown completely outside of their original context.

Adding insult to injury, there are generally enough visual queues in the trailer so that when watching the film, you know exactly when you about to see the clip from the trailer. Instead of an audience reaction of: “Holy Shit! Did you SEE THAT!” You get: “Oh yeah, this is that cool part from the trailer I’ve seen thirty times. I wonder where I put my Twizzlers”

I would love to see movie marketing that only did a teaser trailer and then built the rest of the hype without showing any additional scenes. It seems like it would be fairly easy to shoot extra footage during principal filming that is specifically for commercials and marketing. You then get the best of both worlds. More insight into the story without spoiling of the actual film itself.

For action films in particular, word of mouth marketing would become much more powerful. Instead of, “Oh, man! There was this awesome scene where he jumped on a helicopter! Here, check it out from the trailer.” The last sentence would become “You HAVE to go see it!”

Since I don’t expect this change, I’ll just do my best to avoid trailers for movies I really want to see. (If you have tried this yourself, you know it’s much harder than it sounds.)

I subscribe to a service called Safari Books Online for one of the premiere computer related book publishers: O’Reilly. Here is a snip of an email I recently got from them with the subject “Safari Books Online Service Improvement”.

We have recently implemented a new, streamlined login procedure to access your safari.oreilly.com account. Going forward, you can enter your user ID and password directly into the safari.oreilly.com homepage. These changes will result in a more efficient and responsive authentication process for you.

As a result, when you login to your Safari Books Online account, you will no longer be automatically logged into the network of other O’Reilly websites. Similarly, when you login to the O’Reilly network, you will not be automatically logged into your Safari Books Online account.

So, they tell me this is more efficient. Then, immediately tell me that something that used to work won’t with the result being that I have to log in two times when I only used to have to do it once. I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, but that sounds like the opposite of an improvement to me. Granted, the old way was a little cumbersome as well, but this is more like a trade off of one inconvenience for another one.

One step forward + One step back = no movement.

Or, the Cha Cha if you are watching Real Genius.

Unfortunately, that clip is not on YouTube, but what appears to be the trailer is:

Talk about a trailer that has an entirely different tone than the movie it previewing. Also, I don’t remember the the balloon chair in the film. Anyone else?

(As a further tangent, it’s weird that we still call them “trailers” instead of previews even though they come before the main feature now instead of after them.)

Looking forward to seeing this one: speedandangels.com. It looks like Top Gun (which gets referenced a few times in the clips.) Except that it’s a documentary.

One of the clips in the previews has a recording of a pilots first launch off an aircraft carrier. Sounds exactly like what I think would be going thru my head, but I’d probably be too freaked to get the signal to my brain.

A buddy at work was talking about the movie Firefox which I’m familiar with but don’t think I’ve ever seen. He sent me this trailer on you tube. A wonderful example of movie trailers form the early 80s.

Explosions, super serious but short dialog, sneaking around the corner with a gun, a hell of a left hook, and that A-Team sounding announcer guy. Awesome!

Saw “The Illusionist” this weekend. Very enjoyable film. There was surprisingly little music in it, but that didn’t detract from it. The movie really was all about the story and didn’t try to use special effects, or try to be overly dramatic. It’s one of those films that you don’t have to see in the movie theater to get the “full experience”, but it’s probably worth it anyway. At a minimum, it’s worth seeing when it hits DVD.

Just watched V for Vendetta. Moving aside for a moment the fact that I find Natalie Portman mesmerizing, I think the film is wonderful. Fantasy and fiction provide us with a great way to examine ourselves and this one has that in spades. Thankfully without becoming preachy, campy, overly self-important, or sacrificing the quality of a story.

This one will be added to the collection.

Last night I watched the 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate. I’ve always enjoyed the 1962 version so I was hoping that the remake was done well. I think the ‘62 version is a better film, but they are both very much worth watching. Considering them side by side really provides an excellent marker of social commentary.

I was expecting the 2004 version to be just and updated filming of the same story, but that’s not the case. There are a few differences in the overall story line, but they have a dramatic impact on the overall story arc. The recent version amplifies many of the current terrorism fears and keys off of them. The ‘62 version seems a little anachronistic in 2006, but I wonder if it didn’t have the similar societal, psychological link in its day.

Just watched “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices“.

I haven’t really shopped at Wal-Mart in a long time. Generally speaking I wasn’t a fan of the way they do business. After seeing the documentary, I’ll do my best never to shop there again and encourage others to boycott it as well.

The film obviously has an agenda, but it doesn’t go off into a raving rant. It does throw a lot of info at you. Some of which I had an idea about, but to see raw numbers really puts it in perspective.

The movie itself could have been put together a lot better, but it’s well worth seeing. I’m a good capitalist and have no problem with a company that looks for new and improved ways to make money, but not when the price of innovation is suppression of workers and destruction of communities.

I don’t know if I would classify Wal-Mart as “Evil”, but after seeing the film, you would be hard pressed to convince me that they aren’t really shitty and a disgusting example of greed.

I’m watching “All the Presidents Men” about the Watergate break-in. There is a quote in the movie about Nixon’s chief council that talks about a cartoon on his wall that reads:

“When you got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”

Makes me wonder if this was an unspoken part of the military’s “Hearts and Minds” campaign in Iraq.

Not a big surprise, but you can skip UltraViolet. Or, do some drugs and watch the first fifteen minutes of action (that is pretty good and very colorful), then leave. They tried just a little too hard, and it felt like it was a movie designed by a committie instead of an artist. Two out of four stars.

Of course, Milla Jovovich is very nice on the eyes.