Movie Marketing II: Trailers

Continuing our conversation of how movies are marketing, we turn now to what people have the most contact with: movie trailers. A trailer is the truest form of visual adaptation. Where a product has a poster or albums have singles, motion pictures have theatrical trailers. Trailers, from original teasers to final TV spots, serve as tools of information for the majority of movie goers who do not research films themselves, giving trailers the power to make or break how audiences perceive a movie when they make that decision to buy the ticket. As a case study for this power, I'm going to examine the progression of trailers for the upcoming release Green Lantern.

3D and the Rise of the Proletariat Cinema

James Cameron's Avatar marked the dawn of the new age of Proletariat Cinema. With it taking in over 2.5 billion dollars the masses have spoken. “We want something that looks cool over something that has a fresh plot and meaning.” With us moving in to this new age, films, which are already on the decline and have been for quite sometime, will be almost non-existing.


The definition of proletariat, that relates to this blog, is the class of people who are unintelligent, unenlightened and most of all, uncaring about important issues in modern day society. The proletariat class do not watch films, they watch movies. Before this new age of Proletariat Cinema they wasted their money on the action, horror, and pointless romantic comedy of the day. In the past the Proletariat Cinema did not threaten the film industry simply because the vast majority of these movies only made their budget or only doubled it. The few that did make far over what they spent became the bar setters for that genre of movie but still did not threaten films as a whole.

The Definitions and Differences of the Terms Film and Movie.

For my inaugural post I would like to define, in my own terms, the definitions and differences between what makes a film a film and what makes a movie a movie. For the context of modern day cinema the terms film and movie are used interchangeably when discussing single or multiple motion pictures. Because of my elitist outlook on life I see an exceptional problem with not using different terms to categorize different types of motion pictures. For the next few paragraphs I will explain the criteria of both terms along with why it is important to have two distinct terms for motion pictures as a whole.

The Necessity of Dialogue

Before I start, lets get something straight:

I think dialogue is very important to films. It explains plot, creates character development, and allows the audience to have form a bond with the characters (which is possibly the most important thing a film can do, but that is a later post). However, what I disagree with is the necessity of dialogue.

Battle: LA and Originality

When I'm with friends talking about various films or television shows that have been released or are upcoming, or when talking about projects that we could be working on, possibly the most common question and debate to arise is that of originality. One person pitches a story and another responds with how similar it is to something that came out two months ago, and the idea is dropped. As students deeply interested in not only making movies but enjoying them, the concept of being original is a very strong one. It's somewhat ironic, really, considering how weak of a idea it seems to be in the actual Hollywood industry (but we'll save Hollywood vs. Indie for another time).

I was once reading a list of writing tips from an author and the only one of them I now remember is: Don't worry about being original; if it comes from your mind that makes it original. It's a great piece of advice that I find myself using a lot when defending recent Hollywood blockbusters like James Cameron's Avatar. Take, for a more recent example, the film Battle: Los Angeles, which I thoroughly enjoyed but has received from critics largely negative reviews, seen most in its, biased, Rotten Tomatoes review. It seemed to me that many of the reviews were bashing the movie because it was unoriginal, just another cliche alien invasion action-movie filled with explosions.