Anatomy of an Oscar trailer
These teases are put to the test.
The best movie trailers, like the first one Mad Max: Fury Road delivered, can make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. And the worst can do what Vacation did, and promise a far funnier movie than it delivered. But when it comes to Oscar season (the Academy Awards loom large on Feb. 28) what, exactly, can a powerful trailer do for an anticipated film?
For summer movies, "the trailers are about making you in awe of what you're watching. How did they pull that off?" says Fandango.com managing editor Erik Davis. "Fall awards trailers are about making you feel something. They want you to remember the movie, the experience. It made you feel sad, emotional. You cried, you saw something that was beautiful. They want to win you over on your emotions."
Just look to Carol. Cate Blanchett's big fall movie (in theaters Nov. 20) went straight for the heartstrings, releasing an almost dialogue-free trailer this week for the bittersweet 1950s drama. Under the notes of Margaret Whiting's My Foolish Heart, Blanchett appears as an unhappily married Manhattan socialite who falls for a department store clerk (Rooney Mara). The film got raves at Cannes Film Festival and earned Mara the fest's best actress award.
With big, gritty fall releases lurking around August's corner, audiences also have been teased with peeks at Johnny Depp as infamous gangster Whitey Bulger in Black Mass (Sept. 18), Jennifer Lawrence as a character inspired by the Miracle Mop inventor in Joy and Leonardo DiCaprio in bear-trapping pelts in The Revenant (both Dec. 25).
Something as simple as a trailer can be a game changer, says IMDb.com film editor Keith Simanton, noting how The Martian (Oct. 2) boasted a trailer so visceral that it recast the conversation around the movie from mere sci-fi film to awards-worthy epic. And perhaps no teaser has the Oscar crowd as riled up as Steve Jobs (Oct. 9), starring Michael Fassbender as the mercurial tech giant. "Steve Jobs certainly looks like the perfect made-for-Oscar movie," says awards website GoldDerby.com founder Tom O'Neil.
The film has a potent combination of mass appeal and industry curiosity (given the soap opera surrounding its production that was revealed by leaked e-mails from the Sony hack).
"Everyone's got a smartphone, everyone's got a computer," says Davis, noting early positive chatter for the biopic. "If it's as wildly entertaining as the trailers are showing, it might be the most accessible for people to root for."
As studios angle for dollars and Academy interest, they often lean on some pretty powerful (and expensive) music to preview a film's emotional tone.
This year saw Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep's turn-of-the-century Suffragette (Oct. 23) modernize its message with help from Robyn Sherwell's cover of Landslide. A Great Big World's Say Something is telling viewers how to feel about the Chilean miner story, The 33 (Nov. 13). And David O. Russell plucked the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want to sell his first look at Lawrence in Joy.
True, the first job of the trailer is not awards, it's to sell tickets. And it doesn't hurt to go viral. Just look at Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (Dec. 25). His latest trailer has garnered more than 10 million views on YouTube and sent the Millennial audience into hysterics the day the Samuel L. Jackson-led footage premiered. "It was smartly done. People went nuts over it." says Simanton. "It hit the right 'cool' note."
It was also laced with awards bait, particularly in how it showcased bold character work by a packed cast including Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bruce Dern. "We expect the violence from Tarantino but it was loaded with emotional intensity," says O'Neil.
Some trailers are just trying to creep you out with an Oscar-worthy transformation. The initial Black Mass teaser featured an unsettling dinner scene with Bulger, in which Depp is practically unrecognizable. "It was very indicative of what you were going to get and what a terrifying dude this guy was," says Simanton.
After four Oscar wins for Birdman, director Alejandro González Iñárritu's trailer for The Revenant showcased why many predict the film is destined for the best picture race. Iñárritu kicked off its campaign with a trailer that conveyed the wide lens beauty and violence captured in Canada.
The teaser trailer has 14 million views and counting. "You have to pay attention to The Revenant," says Davis, which reunites Iñárritu and his longtime cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.
There's nearly no dialogue in the first look at the movie, which focused the sound of adrenalized breathing and stunning shots of DiCaprio set against murderous elements in the turn-of-the-century bear-trapping drama. "Right off the bat, it's sparse, it looks like it's from another time, it's rugged," Davis says. "If you're a film fan, you look at something like that and go, 'OK, this is something that I'm going to need to watch.' "
Let the Oscar games begin.
