The Curse Of The Oversell

Today anyone with a computer, hell, a phone with an internet connection has the choice of watching billions of videos, with services improving all the time for fans of film to watch at home. YouTube now has a rental option for a number of older titles, add to that Netflix and LoveFilm and one day the idea of a physical disc to watch your films will be extinct thanks to the internet. With the internet having become such an advertising hot bed, film companies have naturally engaged with the idea of showing extra content online.

It's almost an occupational hazard for myself, and for any film fan, we enjoy seeing trailers for new movies. What seems like a life time ago I used to fervently want to get to a cinema early so that I was ready not only to see the film but all the trailers that came before the main feature. It's yet another function that cinema used to have that has unfortunately been lost in ether as the internet has waded in and made off with that excitement or uncertainty we all once felt. Certainly it is partly my own fault, but when a hotly anticipated film gets its trailer debut online, I can't help but watch, especially now that most people with a good connection can watch a full HD version without the need for waiting. Social media has obviously turned that old way of telling someone about a film to "here watch this, you'll love it!". No effort or expense just click and enjoy, which is great. Although now when I go to the cinema there's this horrible feeling of age when they run a trailer that I saw months ago, in fact this trailer's so old, I've seen the second offering from this movie already. This however rarely spoils my enjoyment of seeing a film I have anticipated. Then there's the movie clips . . .

Clips have become the medium of distributors with really bad poker faces. The films been test screened, the reactions are mixed, or the film is a hard sell, or this needs to be such a massive hit that it must not fail. Distributors flood the internet with clips from their film, and over the past couple of years I've notice that a large percentage of these films that have a good 10-15 minutes worth of clip material, tend to fall short of the mark when you finally see them in the cinema. Personally I can't see what the point in clips are, trailers have always served their purpose well, and if your trailer has done a good job, the viewer knows what they might expect from the film. Unless you saw Drive and you're this crazy woman. Clips spoil what otherwise might have been impacting scenes, now they've just become those bits you've seen already. The Hobbit was chief among them, with so much access to this movie in the form of behind the scenes blogs, several trailer incarnations and a plethora of minute long clips anyone seeing all this content knew way to well what they were in for. Rewind to when The Fellowship Of The Ring first hit screens, I saw one trailer for it and only once and the film totally knocked me over because of that lack of exposure. However the game has changed since it's release in 2001 and it's mainly down to internet piracy forcing companies to oversell their films to get bums on seats. Clip views represent a very small percentage compared to the views of trailers, with The Hobbit trailer having over 11 million (estimated) views and clips ranging in the 200k mark. So what really is the point, other than to leak a bit of footage of a film that is already being glorious over hyped? I fell in to that trap with The Hobbit . . . I'm a fanboy, I watched everything going and I still enjoyed the movie, however I wish I hadn't because a number of parts were tainted by that "I've seen this bit" thought. I'd have seen the movie without one singular trailer, given my love for Peter Jackson and the previous films, yet fans are unfailingly drawn to these revealing tit bits like moths to a flame.

Now you see a number of films taking this road. Jack The Giant Slayer chief among them at the moment with many clips revealing to me how over reliant it is on CGI and how wooden everyone seems to be acting in it, so much so I honestly don't think I'll bother going. The film stinks of band wagon jumping as dark edgy fairy tale movies have seen a trend thanks to Alice In Wonderland, Snow White and the Huntsman and just out this week Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (another clip whore). A raft of clips seems to be the calling card of a film that's set to fail or to be bad, although in a few cases this isn't true, but the majority of clip heavy movies make it feel like a hard sell of something we don't want, rather than just natural promotion of a piece of work. I am sure many would agree that some of the best cinema experiences are those where you've been blind to expectation, where you take a chance on a poster or a friend or critics recommendation. Trailers are a finely crafted marketing tool that can entice the viewer by setting a mood. You wouldn't read a few pages from the middle of a book without knowing the rest, so why play clips of film? Trailers can be done badly enough as it is in a number of cases and often come pre loaded with cliched teases that make you want to see more. Clips just do that, without that vale of painting the colour of the movie. Your just seeing a bit of the bloody film and they usually build up to bits we don't get to see to obviously make you try and think 'I'd like to see more'. I can understand them being uploaded post release to promote the dvd as you've likely seen the film, but to take those scenes out of the context of the whole film before anyone sees it I think is a poor decision.

Some video bloggers don't make things any better and seriously if you need to watch someone review a god damn trailer then you're clearly on a mission to destroy any kind of self enjoyment when you actually see the film. As a regular film viewer I personally have never been sold on a film through a clip, hell rattle off names of Directors and Producers I like and you don't need to show me the trailer. However for those who just go to the movies to have fun and get away from it all, have you ever been sold on the 'movie clip' or are they just a pointless addition to a marketing campaign? Let me know via comments if you wish. For now at least you can watch the new Iron Man 3 trailer below which sells via explosions, a supposed evil person wearing dodgy looking shades, Gwyneth Paltrow in nowt but a bra and loads of CGI Iron Man back ups, my favourite kind of trailer . . . . . . . . not! I smell movie clips!