Latest / The Recess Bell / Movie Trailers!
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: This production is brought to you by the Recess Bell Hi.
- 0:08Speaker 2: How are you doing guys?
- 0:10Speaker 1: It's me Justin Greenberg, the guy who hosts this show
- 0:15Speaker 1: that I don't know if anyone's even listening to, but
- 0:18Speaker 1: I love doing it. It's Film Reel right here on
- 0:21Speaker 1: the Recess Bell Network, and today I'm gonna be talking
- 0:25Speaker 1: about movie trailers. Now, the beauty of this show is
- 0:30Speaker 1: it's my personal stories. If you want to learn the
- 0:33Speaker 1: history of movie trailers, I know they've been around for
- 0:36Speaker 1: well over one hundred years.
- 0:37Speaker 2: I'm not gonna know that stuff.
- 0:39Speaker 1: But the reason why I love doing this show is
- 0:41Speaker 1: because it's, you know, essentially my childhood, my growing up,
- 0:45Speaker 1: and my history with movies. So that's what this episode's
- 0:49Speaker 1: gonna be about. We're gonna talk about the positives of
- 0:51Speaker 1: movie trailers, the negatives of movie trailers, some of my
- 0:55Speaker 1: all time favorites, and some of the cliches that I
- 0:59Speaker 1: just absolutely hate that go along with seemingly every single
- 1:03Speaker 1: movie trailer these days.
- 1:04Speaker 2: So let's get into it right now here we go,
- 1:10Speaker 2: we're starting. Did I hit recording? Yep, it's recording.
- 1:34Speaker 1: Let's start off with the positives of movie trailers. I
- 1:39Speaker 1: actually think there's a lot more negatives or trailers than
- 1:41Speaker 1: there are positives, But to me, they are the selling point.
- 1:45Speaker 2: They are a.
- 1:47Speaker 1: Quick gauge into seeing if an audience is interested in
- 1:51Speaker 1: a movie. And especially when you go to the movies
- 1:53Speaker 1: and you're watching it with an audience, you could tell
- 1:57Speaker 1: if a movie is going to have a certain buzz
- 2:00Speaker 1: around it based off of the trailer, whether it's the
- 2:03Speaker 1: murmuring after the trailer ends, oh, I got to see that,
- 2:06Speaker 1: you'll hear someone in the background. I vividly remember seeing
- 2:10Speaker 1: the movie Spawn in movie theaters and there was a
- 2:13Speaker 1: trailer for Alient Resurrection and a guy in the back
- 2:17Speaker 1: of the audience.
- 2:18Speaker 2: Said, I can't wait to see that one.
- 2:21Speaker 1: In a sarcastic tone, and the whole audience was dying laughing.
- 2:27Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, that was true with
- 2:31Speaker 1: what the actual movie was. It was a terrible movie.
- 2:33Speaker 1: It didn't do good and and that trailer didn't do
- 2:36Speaker 1: a good selling point to you know, get audiences invested
- 2:39Speaker 1: into the movie. Sometimes there's just a certain buzz around
- 2:42Speaker 1: a trailer, you know. For me, the teaser trailer is
- 2:47Speaker 1: something I'm actually into more than the actual trailer. I
- 2:49Speaker 1: feel like you know, a full length trailer. People that
- 2:52Speaker 1: don't know what the fuck a trailer is, I guess
- 2:54Speaker 1: you should explain. It's the preview before the movie.
- 2:57Speaker 2: The previews. You know, you're watching the previous.
- 2:58Speaker 1: If you don't know what a trailer is and you're
- 3:00Speaker 1: watching or listening to me talk about movies, she probably
- 3:03Speaker 1: stopped listening to the podcast at this point. I'm not
- 3:05Speaker 1: gonna baby this yar trailer. You know what a trailer.
- 3:07Speaker 1: I'm not talking about a trailer that's you know, in
- 3:09Speaker 1: the back of a truck, movie previews trailers, I think
- 3:14Speaker 1: the teaser trailer, which is usually like a thirty second thing.
- 3:17Speaker 1: To me, that's that's what really gets me hooked in
- 3:20Speaker 1: because it's more mysterious. You're not seeing so much. And
- 3:24Speaker 1: again we're gonna get to some of the negatives of
- 3:26Speaker 1: trailers later on, and you know, one of those is
- 3:29Speaker 1: showing too much of what the movie is. But the
- 3:32Speaker 1: teaser trailer, that's where your intrigue really starts. When I
- 3:36Speaker 1: was a kid, I actually loved the previews. I remember
- 3:38Speaker 1: there were shows actually on TV, you know, pre internet,
- 3:41Speaker 1: that would just show movie previews. When you rented a
- 3:44Speaker 1: movie coming soon to a theater near you, you know,
- 3:47Speaker 1: that would play before each movie, and we loved it.
- 3:52Speaker 2: Coming soon to theaters, coming, coming, coming, We loved it
- 3:56Speaker 2: as a kid.
- 3:57Speaker 1: One of the earlier episodes on this podcast, I was
- 3:59Speaker 1: talking about the movie Mortal Kombat, and when me and
- 4:02Speaker 1: my brother rented Dumb and Dumber, they showed a teaser
- 4:04Speaker 1: trailer for Mortal Kombat and we rewound that thing forty
- 4:08Speaker 1: or fifty times, just watching it over and over again.
- 4:11Speaker 1: Now with the Internet, that's where people get their teaser trailers.
- 4:14Speaker 1: On the last episode of Film Reel, we were talking
- 4:16Speaker 1: about physical media and how no major studios are actually
- 4:20Speaker 1: releasing physical media, so you're not gonna get those trailers
- 4:22Speaker 1: prior to the movies because they're not being released. And
- 4:25Speaker 1: Netflix and other streaming services don't have you previews before
- 4:30Speaker 1: the movies. I wonder if that's something they'll eventually implement,
- 4:33Speaker 1: But if you're going to see your trailers these days,
- 4:35Speaker 1: it's usually on the Internet. That's where you get your
- 4:38Speaker 1: first experience with it. And again, I don't like that,
- 4:41Speaker 1: that's one of the negatives. I like being introduced to
- 4:44Speaker 1: the movie preview before an actual movie, so I try
- 4:48Speaker 1: and avoid all trailers until I actually am seeing it
- 4:51Speaker 1: on the big screen. I loved the surprise of a
- 4:56Speaker 1: trailer when, especially when I was younger, that's I hate
- 5:00Speaker 1: to be this old guy. Oh it's so much better
- 5:03Speaker 1: back in my day, But it just was. It really was,
- 5:08Speaker 1: and you're not surprised by pretty much anything these days.
- 5:12Speaker 1: You know, let's just use Marvel for example. They've mapped
- 5:15Speaker 1: out the next ten years of Marvel movies, so you
- 5:18Speaker 1: know what's coming next. Unless you're living under a rock
- 5:22Speaker 1: and avoiding all social media. You know they're making a
- 5:25Speaker 1: Fantastic four. You know they're making you know, another Avengers
- 5:30Speaker 1: movie down the line. But when you were younger and
- 5:33Speaker 1: the internet really wasn't a thing, those movie previews were
- 5:38Speaker 1: the introduction, the the hey we're making a new Batman movie.
- 5:43Speaker 1: Hey they're making a Spawn movie, and that's lost. Let's
- 5:48Speaker 1: get into the negatives because there's I feel like there's
- 5:49Speaker 1: a lot more negatives when it comes to modern movie trailers.
- 5:53Speaker 1: If you go back to like the seventies, trailers were terrible.
- 5:56Speaker 1: They really were terrible. The initial Star Wars trailer was
- 5:59Speaker 1: a laugh joke. Everyone saw that trailer and thought this
- 6:02Speaker 1: movie was going to be horrendous Star Wars a billion
- 6:07Speaker 1: years in the making, and it's coming to your galaxy
- 6:11Speaker 1: this summer. That's coming. I really think they start to
- 6:17Speaker 1: perfect the trailer in the nineties and actually into the
- 6:22Speaker 1: early two thousands. That's when they become really cinematic, and
- 6:25Speaker 1: a lot of the times the trailers were significantly better
- 6:28Speaker 1: than the actual movie. And that's one of the negatives.
- 6:32Speaker 1: And another big negative is a lot of these trailers.
- 6:35Speaker 1: And you hear this cliche all the time, but it
- 6:37Speaker 1: is so true. These movie trailers show way too much.
- 6:43Speaker 1: You get all the big jokes when it comes to
- 6:45Speaker 1: a comedy, you get all the big scares when it
- 6:47Speaker 1: comes to a horror movie. It also spoils certain things.
- 6:51Speaker 1: So let's just go back to an example that I
- 6:54Speaker 1: want to bring up. The last Star Wars movie to
- 6:56Speaker 1: come out, Episode nine, an awful movie. But in the
- 7:01Speaker 1: trailer for this movie, they showed a lot of scenes
- 7:03Speaker 1: with Chewbacca with other characters, and around a third way
- 7:07Speaker 1: through the movie, you're supposed to believe that Chewbacca dies.
- 7:11Speaker 1: But I'm sitting there in the theater and I'm going
- 7:14Speaker 1: I saw the trailer. There's several scenes that weren't there,
- 7:18Speaker 1: so we know he's going to show back up because
- 7:22Speaker 1: I saw him interact with so and so. I saw
- 7:24Speaker 1: him interact there, and we haven't gotten those scenes, just
- 7:27Speaker 1: so you just gave that away. I think the worst
- 7:31Speaker 1: example of a trailer spoiling things is the movie Castaway,
- 7:36Speaker 1: which is such.
- 7:37Speaker 2: A good movie.
- 7:38Speaker 1: Tom Hanks. He's trapped on an island. Will he get
- 7:41Speaker 1: off the Oh yeah, he will get off the island,
- 7:42Speaker 1: because the trailer shows him getting off the island.
- 7:48Speaker 2: We were launched for four years. We had a funeral coffin.
- 7:54Speaker 1: What was in it that I cannot believe that they
- 7:59Speaker 1: would allow that. Now, a lot of directors don't really
- 8:02Speaker 1: even have say as to what goes into the trailer.
- 8:04Speaker 1: That's the studios call. But you think somebody like Robert
- 8:07Speaker 1: SimK is a guy who made Back to the Future,
- 8:09Speaker 1: who framed Roger Rabbit Forrest Gump, would have some say.
- 8:13Speaker 1: So I'm curious as to how he would allow such
- 8:17Speaker 1: a monumental moment in the movie get released in the trailer.
- 8:23Speaker 1: Absolutely embarrassing. There's a couple of cliches that I've noticed,
- 8:28Speaker 1: and I want you guys to notice next time you
- 8:29Speaker 1: go to the movies, because they're pretty much there'll you're
- 8:33Speaker 1: guaranteed to see it now if Hollywood decides to ever
- 8:36Speaker 1: make a comedy again, because that's just something that they
- 8:39Speaker 1: don't do anymore. You'll notice one trend. There'll be music
- 8:43Speaker 1: playing throughout the trailer. Then to accentuate the joke, they
- 8:47Speaker 1: will stop the music, and that's the cue for the
- 8:51Speaker 1: audience to laugh along. It's sort of like when you're
- 8:54Speaker 1: watching a sitcom and they have the laugh tracks. It's
- 8:58Speaker 1: to get the sheep to go, yeah, yeah, that's supposed
- 9:04Speaker 1: to be funny. Hey, I'm calling about the ad for
- 9:06Speaker 1: healthy girls with good sat scores.
- 9:08Speaker 2: She could take your clothes off in there. I don't
- 9:11Speaker 2: know if it's even legal.
- 9:12Speaker 1: Another cliche, which I think is something that's far more
- 9:16Speaker 1: recent than the stopping of the music for comedy, it's
- 9:19Speaker 1: this taking a classic song and then having a slowed
- 9:23Speaker 1: down version of it. I don't know why they think
- 9:27Speaker 1: this is so epic. They'll take the dumbest song.
- 9:30Speaker 2: The Wilds on the busco.
- 9:35Speaker 1: Down and now they haven't used that song, but I
- 9:40Speaker 1: wouldn't be shocked if they do that.
- 9:42Speaker 2: I'm incapable of leaving you alone.
- 9:44Speaker 1: Duff had a rough start in life, you should steer
- 9:49Speaker 1: clear for me healthy every time you go to the
- 9:56Speaker 1: movies and you're watching at least five or six trailers.
- 9:59Speaker 1: One of those previous we'll have some song from the sixties, seventies, eighties,
- 10:04Speaker 1: and they'll do a remixed version of it slowed down
- 10:07Speaker 1: to be epic. Music is so important to not just
- 10:12Speaker 1: the actual movie, but the trailer, and that anytime that happens,
- 10:16Speaker 1: I roll my eyes and go ugh, we're doing that
- 10:19Speaker 1: cliche again. How about some of the best Let's again
- 10:23Speaker 1: way too much negative. Let's talk about some of the
- 10:25Speaker 1: best movie trailers. Let's start with one that was a
- 10:29Speaker 1: bad movie, because that's something that could happen. That's always
- 10:32Speaker 1: so fascinating. Sometimes really good movies have bad trailers, likely
- 10:36Speaker 1: we talked about with Star Wars, and then sometimes it's
- 10:39Speaker 1: vice versa.
- 10:39Speaker 2: There there's a trailer that's so good.
- 10:42Speaker 1: And you're like, this movie can't be bad, and then
- 10:45Speaker 1: it ends up being crappy. One of those that stands
- 10:48Speaker 1: out for me is Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes.
- 10:51Speaker 1: I thought this was gonna be freaking fantastic. The special
- 10:54Speaker 1: effects were great, didn't reveal too much about the plot.
- 10:57Speaker 1: We're getting a new Apes movie after thirty something years.
- 11:00Speaker 1: And then the movie actually started and it was horrendous,
- 11:04Speaker 1: but a fantastic, well put together trailer. One that I
- 11:10Speaker 1: was so interested in was Cloverfield. I didn't really care
- 11:14Speaker 1: for the movie, but that initial teaser trailer there was
- 11:19Speaker 1: so much buzz. I'm telling you everyone on the internet
- 11:22Speaker 1: was talking about this preview because there was so little
- 11:26Speaker 1: information about it. Nobody really knew what it was going
- 11:28Speaker 1: to be. And I remember people online trying to decipher
- 11:31Speaker 1: what the people in the trailer were actually saying.
- 11:33Speaker 2: There is that a lion?
- 11:35Speaker 1: I remember people thinking as there were a giant lion
- 11:37Speaker 1: and ended up being a random monster. But other people
- 11:40Speaker 1: thought it was a Godzilla movie. They thought this was
- 11:42Speaker 1: some secret Godzilla movie that was being made. And there
- 11:45Speaker 1: was such a fantastic buzz around that trailer. Speaking of buzz,
- 11:50Speaker 1: the marketing, the whole marketing around the Blair Witch project
- 11:55Speaker 1: absolutely brilliant, and those trailers made it seem like what
- 11:59Speaker 1: we were watching was a documentary. And again, you would
- 12:04Speaker 1: lose that in twenty twenty four when I'm recording this podcast,
- 12:08Speaker 1: something like that would be debunked right away.
- 12:11Speaker 2: You'd have a Facebook page of the actors.
- 12:13Speaker 1: You'd have a Twitter account, they'd have a TikTok, you'd
- 12:17Speaker 1: know that these were actors. Somehow, some way that would
- 12:21Speaker 1: be revealed. But back in nineteen ninety nine, when the
- 12:24Speaker 1: Internet that we know is in its infancy, that marketing
- 12:28Speaker 1: buzz that was really like the first movie to really
- 12:31Speaker 1: use the Internet to its advantage. A majority of the
- 12:35Speaker 1: people had no idea what we were watching. Is this
- 12:39Speaker 1: a documentary? And I know the movie is very divisive,
- 12:43Speaker 1: I love it, but the trailer, there's no denying that
- 12:47Speaker 1: that buzz surrounding the movie all because of the trailer
- 12:51Speaker 1: sold that film and it became one of the most
- 12:53Speaker 1: profitable movies of all time, simply, I think based off
- 12:57Speaker 1: of its marketing. You want to talk about marketing everywhere.
- 13:01Speaker 1: Godzilla from the year before nineteen ninety eight. The buzz
- 13:05Speaker 1: for this movie started the year prior when Jurassic Park
- 13:09Speaker 1: two The Lost World was in theaters, and before that
- 13:13Speaker 1: movie started. I remember this teaser trailer very vividly. It's
- 13:19Speaker 1: a group of people in the Museum of Natural History.
- 13:21Speaker 1: They're looking at the Tyrannosaurus Rex, you know, the bones
- 13:24Speaker 1: of it. And this is before Jurassic Park so this
- 13:27Speaker 1: was all calculated. They knew this was going to debut
- 13:29Speaker 1: before the new Jurassic Park movie. So they have the
- 13:32Speaker 1: t Rex right, and then boom, Godzilla's foot crashes through
- 13:37Speaker 1: the ceiling and smashes the t Rex, and then it's
- 13:40Speaker 1: revealed that a year from then, you know, they're going
- 13:44Speaker 1: to be releasing a Godzilla movie. And it was like, wow,
- 13:47Speaker 1: they can release trailers a year prior to the movie
- 13:51Speaker 1: actually being released. That is something I don't think was
- 13:55Speaker 1: happening years ago. That pretty much started. I want to
- 13:59Speaker 1: say Godzilla was one of those first movies to really
- 14:01Speaker 1: start that buzz a year prior to it being released.
- 14:05Speaker 1: The movie ended up being terrible, but you know, the
- 14:08Speaker 1: marketing was so good. I want to lump some of
- 14:10Speaker 1: the marketing along within this conversation of just trailers. But
- 14:13Speaker 1: posters are very important. The modern poster is terrible. It's
- 14:17Speaker 1: always some just just horrible photoshoped green screen sort of crap.
- 14:23Speaker 1: And back in the day, there was an art to
- 14:25Speaker 1: the poster. Look up a guy Drew Strusen, look up
- 14:28Speaker 1: a guy like John Alvin. These are movie poster artists
- 14:32Speaker 1: that crafted these amazing creations for movies like Indiana Jones
- 14:37Speaker 1: and Back to the Future and Aladdin, and it's art.
- 14:40Speaker 1: It's work of art, and there's this simplicity to it
- 14:42Speaker 1: and an intrigue that you get from just looking.
- 14:44Speaker 2: At a logo.
- 14:45Speaker 1: Look at the logo for Jurassic Park, look at the
- 14:48Speaker 1: logo for Ghostbusters. Those are iconic images, just a simple
- 14:53Speaker 1: black background with a simple logo, and it sold the
- 14:57Speaker 1: movie Batman from nineteen eighty nine, a simple logo that
- 15:00Speaker 1: is so iconic. You're not getting that anymore. What logo
- 15:04Speaker 1: for a movie has come out in the last twenty
- 15:06Speaker 1: five years where it's iconic. Look at the poster for
- 15:09Speaker 1: the original Avengers movie, one of the ugliest posters ever conceived.
- 15:13Speaker 1: I like the movie, but the poster is shit. And
- 15:16Speaker 1: that's part of this whole marketing scheme. And Godzilla really
- 15:20Speaker 1: perfected that with you know, collaborations with Taco Bell and
- 15:23Speaker 1: anytime you'd see a bus, it would have a giant
- 15:26Speaker 1: banner on it saying, you know, Godzilla's cock is the
- 15:29Speaker 1: size of this bus. I swear to God I saw
- 15:32Speaker 1: that somewhere two trailers before the movie, Jerry Maguire, I
- 15:38Speaker 1: rent to Jerry Maguire, and two trailers showed that I
- 15:42Speaker 1: was so excited for and again you're rewinding the VHS tape,
- 15:47Speaker 1: rewatching it over and over again. And luckily these two
- 15:49Speaker 1: movies ended up being two of my favorite movies of
- 15:52Speaker 1: all time. Men in Black and Starship Troopers fantastic trailers.
- 15:58Speaker 1: Didn't show too much, but showed it enough to get
- 16:01Speaker 1: you interested in what you're going to be seeing moving forward.
- 16:05Speaker 1: I think The Dark Knight did a fantastic job, especially
- 16:10Speaker 1: after the tragic passing of Heath Ledger. It's a tough
- 16:13Speaker 1: thing to market a movie once you know your your
- 16:16Speaker 1: co star dies. You know, how do you market this?
- 16:18Speaker 1: How do you how do you talk about this movie
- 16:20Speaker 1: when you go on the Tonight Show without mentioning Heath Ledger?
- 16:23Speaker 1: How do you show movie trailers without you know that
- 16:27Speaker 1: in the back of your head that you know the
- 16:28Speaker 1: main antagonist of this movie is is dead in the
- 16:32Speaker 1: real world. And they did a really good job The
- 16:35Speaker 1: Dark Knight. And they did something that I think, again
- 16:39Speaker 1: I could be mistaken, but this is just from my
- 16:41Speaker 1: memory that I don't know if it was ever done before,
- 16:44Speaker 1: but before the movie, I am legend they showed an
- 16:48Speaker 1: entire scene from the movie now looking back at it.
- 16:53Speaker 1: I'm not a fan that they did that. They're they're
- 16:55Speaker 1: they're showing an entire scene from the movie. But at
- 16:58Speaker 1: the time it was a big thing. A lot of
- 17:01Speaker 1: people went to go see I Am Legends, specifically to
- 17:05Speaker 1: watch this scene from The Dark Knight because there was
- 17:07Speaker 1: such a buzz around that movie. And I use that
- 17:10Speaker 1: word buzz, but it's it's true and that and that's
- 17:13Speaker 1: something that I know I've said a few times with
- 17:16Speaker 1: this specific episode of the podcast, but.
- 17:19Speaker 2: That's what the trailer needs to do.
- 17:20Speaker 1: There needs to be something about the trailer that get
- 17:25Speaker 1: you not wanting to forget what you saw and makes
- 17:29Speaker 1: you want to buy a ticket and go see the movie.
- 17:33Speaker 1: It is so important now in today's day and age,
- 17:36Speaker 1: there's things like Ron Tomatoes and that's a whole different
- 17:38Speaker 1: discussion for a different day, but that's that's another big
- 17:42Speaker 1: selling point for people. Is you know, is the audience
- 17:45Speaker 1: score good? Is the is the critics score good for
- 17:48Speaker 1: a movie? But for a lot of people, they ignore that.
- 17:52Speaker 1: They just go by did I enjoy the trailer? And
- 17:55Speaker 1: it's especially in a pre Ron Tomatoes day and age,
- 17:59Speaker 1: the trailer was what got you to go see the movie.
- 18:04Speaker 1: You go on YouTube, some of the most highest viewed
- 18:07Speaker 1: videos in the history of that website are movie trailers.
- 18:11Speaker 1: People love movies, but I think a lot of people
- 18:14Speaker 1: love the idea of a trailer because I like to
- 18:18Speaker 1: think of it as the.
- 18:19Speaker 2: Opening of a football season.
- 18:22Speaker 1: It's like Week one, right, you don't know what the
- 18:25Speaker 1: team's gonna be going into the preseason. You get the
- 18:27Speaker 1: teaser trailer and that's sort of an indication as to
- 18:30Speaker 1: what this team or what this movie is going to be.
- 18:33Speaker 1: Are people invested in the team? Are people gonna go
- 18:37Speaker 1: the pay to watch the Mets or watch you know,
- 18:39Speaker 1: I know I said football, but you know where my
- 18:41Speaker 1: Mets giar right now? So are people gonna go watch
- 18:44Speaker 1: the Jets?
- 18:44Speaker 2: You know?
- 18:45Speaker 1: Based off of that Week one, based off of that
- 18:47Speaker 1: trailer that was initially shown. And I think that buzz
- 18:51Speaker 1: and excitement, like I said, is gone with the internet
- 18:54Speaker 1: these days.
- 18:54Speaker 2: You know what's coming out.
- 18:55Speaker 1: But I just have all those fond memories of when
- 18:58Speaker 1: I was a kid and I didn't know what was
- 19:00Speaker 1: coming out and you would be shocked and surprised. That
- 19:04Speaker 1: wonder with cinema, and that's going to do it for
- 19:08Speaker 1: this edition of the film Real. My name is Justin Greenberg.
- 19:11Speaker 1: Thank you all for listening, so long coming