Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they're seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I'm operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
More Than A Game Trailer
So, if you're sitting in the front row when LeBron James tosses his rosin up in the air like some sort of ass clown who wants to have a gimmick, the white dust probably settling somewhere in your twelve dollar Budweiser bomber, are you supposed to feel honored that he's doing it in your presence? Oddly, most people say yes, you are.
I've missed the LeBron boat somewhere but it's not surprising considering my hobby is film and not hoops. I have a love for documentary filmmaking, though, and have a special affinity for Hoop Dreams, one of the best portraits of kids trying to make it big in the world of professional sports that has ever been put out for public consumption. This trailer, though, rivets as it equally delights.
The trailer gets right to it, no question. It showcases who the Chosen One is and intersperses images from the man he once was growing up. The use of technology to make 2D pictures separate so they look more fluid, animated works in the favor for a trailer that has to have the same explosiveness of an NBA game in order to get the right kind of viewer to pay for admission to see this. The generic techno, while a little on the stale side, has the right effect.
The cinematography is reminiscent of so many of the HBO films pieces that air about professional athletes: the edges are darkened, the colors saturated. The tone shifts, the music slides into a piano solo as we get glimpses into LeBron and those who lived the dream in his orbit. The guys he played with are neatly packaged into these few second clips as characters completely unto themselves. They're fascinating. Using photos, videos, voiceovers from people who lived it, it becomes something more than a documentary when you see that LeBron was the only one to get through it all but kudos to the trailer makers who don't just focus on LeBron. We get a real story here about a team of players who were a family.
This is a portrait of a athletic artist as a young man who would grow up to be king of Cleveland but, as the trailer goes, this is not just about him, it's about his friends, his teammates.
The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life (Le premier jour du reste de ta vie) Trailer
Look, I understand the idea of modesty.
Being modest only works when you're surrounded by others and are mindful not to put on airs so people don't think you're a stuck-up twat. So, when you've made a film and you want people to watch what you've created the worst thing you can do is put the fact you've won three French Academy Awards at the ass end of the trailer.
This is the trouble with film marketing by those who don't understand to accentuate the very thing that would make people want to see it. The film's director, Rémi Bezançon, has made a multi-generational, layered story that tracks the lives of more than just a few people, which could be overwhelming if it weren't for the great opening of this trailer. You have a sensitive, patriarchal man (a rarity in cinema when you consider how many guys proclaim the love for their children and then get labeled as femme or somehow less of man) who in the very next scene is slapping the crap out of his kid. It's a dichotomy to be sure, but it intrigues me.
What's more is the way, temporally, this movie splays itself out for examination. You have parents and their kids who are all focused on, there appears to be five different story lines happening at once, but, in addition to them, we see the father himself having issues with his own dad. The soundtrack is subdued, sweet, as the trailer really kicks up the narrative a little around the minute mark. We get a glimpse into the life of the father who just lays into his old man as we get our conventional distant male stalwart in the form of grandpa.
I don't know why this trailer j
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