Set during World War I, it tells the story of a horse who ends up being sold into the army and serving both British and German forces in the battlefields of France.
For some reason Sony have given the exclusive to MSN but if the above embed is giving you problems then just check it out at Apple Trailers or YouTube.
YouTube Doubler is a website that allows you to play two videos at the same time and compare them side-by-side.
The two Spider-Man trailers make an interesting case study as they reveal the similarities and differences of the respective films.
The 2002 trailer is snappier and has no problem featuring Peter Parker as Spider-Man, whereas as the 2012 one doesn’t really reveal the iconic suit until the very end in an extended POV epilogue, which appears to be a showcase for the film’s 3D visuals (the CGI looks like it needs to be refined).
For the record, I think the trailer for the 2002 film is much stronger, although it’s hard to fully judge until the new film comes out.
The Amazing Spider-Man is out on July 3rd 2012, just 9 days ahead of The Dark Knight Rises, which suggests Sony are pretty bullish about this film having a massive opening weekend.
The first teaser trailer for the upcoming Batman film The Dark Knight Rises was officially released today.
It will be released on July 20th next year and as the film is currently shooting, there is only a couple of new bits of footage mixed in with clips from Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008).
Interestingly, Warner Bros released it on the official Facebook page for the film (the official site links directly to it), which is a clever move as it allows them to track ‘likes’ and comments from fans, as opposed to an embedded trailer which merely tracks page views and plays.
Obviously this is one of the most anticipated films in years, so how does a studio like Warner Bros go about releasing the first teaser?
They decided to attach it to cinema prints of the latest Harry Potter film (thus tapping in to a huge audience) but part of the problem is that these days people just film it on their smart phone and upload it to YouTube.
That meant that although some got taken down, it wasn’t hard to see one on the popular video site and, if you were really keen, /Film even posted a detailed description.
The official trailer in HD finally dropped on Facebook at around 5pm London time and predictably was linked all over the place.
But it raises the question – shouldn’t studios just premiere big trailers like this on YouTube?
As for the content, we get a glimpse of what the story might involve, the main villain, a brief new clip of Batman and that weird chant music which was playing on the official website until recently.
Also, freeze frame the trailer at 1:24 and you’ll notice a blurry figure in the background who some are already speculating about.
Finally AndrewSS7 has created this wonderful montage of the posters from the three Batman films (Warner Bros should hire this guy).
Warner Bros have released the trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which is the final part in the series and destined to be the highest grossing film of 2011.
For non-Potter fans this is technically film 7B.
For Potter fans, J.K. Rowling has a new project called Pottermore.
These different trailers for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) give an interesting glimpse of how different eras perceive a film.
After the commercial disappointment of Barry Lyndon (1975), Kubrick wanted to do something with a bit more box office potential.
An adaptation of a Stephen King novel with a big star (Jack Nicholson) seemed to be a way of combining his interests as a director with the opportunity for a hit movie.
We can see part of this journey in how The Shining has been depicted in various trailers down the years.
Before the original US release in May 1980 there was this creepy teaser, which used the now famous image of blood coming out of an elevator.
The mood and mysterious tone kept users guessing, whilst cleverly using one of the signature shots.
On its release in the UK a few months later, Warner Bros were probably disappointed at the patchy reception in the US.
This recently unearthed UK TV spot reveals a lot more, but the inclusion of a still featuring Jack Nicholson’s grin (different from those used in other marketing materials) makes me wonder if the publicity department was having an off day when they approved this.
Kubrick then made a number of cuts to the film (around 25 minutes worth) before it opened in London and it seems initial audiences were baffled or even bored by what they saw.
The director was even nominated for a Golden Rasperry Award for Worst Director (!), which seems ridiculous now but perhaps speaks to its gradual appeal.
Part of that was down to screenings of the film on television and video during the 1980s, as it gathered a new audience who could appreciate its unusual style and considered approach.
This trailer for the ABC TV premiere in 1983 calls the film a ‘ultimate exercise in terror’ and cuts together some of the famous images in the film, including one scene involving skeletons dressed up at a party that was excised from the UK cut.
By now the film had ended its theatrical run, but a new audience was beginning to experience it just as the home video boom was taking off.
But why did it succeed with home audiences just three years after cinemagoers had partly rejected it?
Part of it may be down to Kubrick’s style, which doesn’t always make concessions to first time viewers and that The Shining has a special quality when you see it at home.
After all, it explores the quiet terror of being alone in a building and the ghosts of the people that may (or may not) have lived there before.
Perhaps the solitary nature of viewing it in the home suited the film better than the communal environment of the cinema.
Another technical detail worth pointing out is that it was effectively shot in the aspect ratio of 1.37, which means that although it was conceived and framed for a 1:85 theatrical release, the film was visually well suited to the squarer screens of TV and didn’t have to be pan and scanned.
“At first sight this is an extremely simple, even static film. [..] Kubrick had put so much effort into his film, building vast sets at Elstree, making a 17-week shoot stretch to 46, and what was the result? A silly scare story – something that, it was remarked at the time, Roger Corman could have turned around in a fortnight. But look beyond the simplicity and the Overlook reveals itself as a palace of paradox…. Even if the drama appears straightforward, there’s the matter of the unearthly stage it’s enacted on – the hotel itself, with its extraordinary atmospherics. Hotel manager Ullman (Barry Nelson) welcomes Jack by telling him how a former caretaker, Charles Grady, went crazy and chopped up his family: the problem was cabin fever, the result of confinement in isolation. Not only do the Torrances suffer cabin fever but Kubrick wants us to as well. The Shining makes us inhabit every comer of the painstakingly constructed hotel sets, and the way the film guides us along corridors, around corners, up staircases – thanks to Garrett Brown’s revolutionary new gizmo the Steadicam – makes us feel we know every inch of the place, even (especially) the sound of its silences.”
It is true that there is an unsettling power to the film which takes the viewer right inside the mysteries of a particular place, rather than focus on the struggle between an innocent protagonist and an evil monster.
After his death people began to focus less on Kubrick’s reputation as a ‘reclusive genius’ and focus more on the glory of his work, which continues to inspire a generation of filmmakers fascinated by his attention to detail and impeccable craft.
With the proliferation of cheap digital editing tools and the web, frequent homages to Kubrick appear online, but perhaps the most memorable was this 2005 reworking of the film’s trailer as a romantic comedy:
Robert Ryang, 25, a film editor’s assistant in Manhattan, graduated from Columbia three years ago with a double major in film studies and psychology. This week, he got an eye-opening lesson in both. Since 2002, Mr. Ryang has worked for one of the owners of P.S. 260, a commercial postproduction house, cutting commercials for the likes of Citizens Bank, Cingular and the TriBeCa Film Festival. A few weeks back, he said, he entered a contest for editors’ assistants sponsored by the New York chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors. The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it – but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said. Mr. Ryang won the contest, and about 10 days ago, he said, he sent three friends a link to a “secret site” on his company’s Web site where they could watch his entry. One of them, Mr. Ryang said, posted it on his little-watched blog. And that was that. Until this week, when he was hit by a tsunami of Internet interest. On Wednesday, Mr. Ryang said, his secret site got 12,000 hits. By Thursday the numbers were even higher, his film was being downloaded and linked to on countless other sites, it had cracked the top 10 most popular spoofs on www.ifilm.com, and a vice president at a major Hollywood studio had called up his office, scouting for new talent.
The video has since been seen over 3 million times on YouTube.
By 2008 Kubrick’s status as a legend was complete and when UK channel More 4 screened a season of his films that summer, this trail was a wonderful homage to the making of The Shining:
Over the course of nearly thirty years, the reputation of Kubrick’s horror has grown. But what kind of trailer would Warner Bros cut for the film today?
The fact that The Shining still resonates, after the chilly reception in 1980, through numerous showings on TV and home video, is a testament its enduring power.
Was the leaked trailer for David Fincher’s remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo the first stage of a clever marketing campaign?
The first I heard of it was an official email on Friday morning telling me that the TV debut of the trailer would be Thursday 2nd June.
All this is pretty standard stuff for a major studio announcing the first look at a major production (this is Sony’s big film for Christmas).
But then over the weekend a bootleg version of the trailer popped up on YouTube and began lighting up on people’s Twitter feeds.
Set to a funky cover version of Led Zeppelin‘s Immigrant Song performed by Trent Reznor and Karen O, it’s one of the most striking and stylish teasers for a big studio film I’ve seen in quite some time.
Notice the quick cutting (there seems to be a rhythm of one edit per second), the dark Seven-style vibe and big, blocky fonts at the end which spell the fantastic tagline of “The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas”.
It feels like Fincher had a hand in personally supervising this, but how did it end up online? More to the point, how does a bootlegged trailer shot in a cinema sound so good?
Could it be the first step in Sony’s marketing push for this film?
(Let’s also not forget that one of the main characters is a computer hacker, so maybe the idea of an unofficial bootleg trailer fits in with the mood of the story).
A new film from director Alexander Payne is a pretty big deal, especially since he hasn’t made one since Sideways (2004).
The new trailer has now surfaced for The Descendants, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings about a land baron (George Clooney) trying to re-connect with his two daughters after his wife slips into a coma.
It also stars Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges and Robert Forster.
Fox Searchlight will be hoping for awards season action when it gets released stateside in December and although a UK release is TBC, I would imagine it would open around January or February.
A political thriller about who wrote the plays of William Shakespeare might not seem like obvious material for director Roland Emmerich.
But Anonymous opens in the US in September and the first trailer has been released:
It follows Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) – who some people believe wrote Shakespeare’s plays – and is set against the backdrop of the Essex rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave).
Incidentally, 16th century London was recreated at Babelsberg Studios in Berlin with sets and a lot of CGI.
Various pieces of film music often end up in trailers for other movies but some appear more frequently than others.
When you watch a trailer for an upcoming film, the music featured is not necessarily what you hear in the final cut.
Often this is because the film and score haven’t been finished, but there are some musical cues that keep re-appearing.
The movie music website Soundtrack.net have compiled a long list of frequently used cues from trailers and here are the top five:
1. Redrum from Immediate Music (Used 28 times): Immediate Music are a LA-based music company that specialise in music for trailers and for some reason their track ‘Redrum’ has really caught on. The pounding rhythm conveys a sense of emergency, the dynamic pause at 0.22 is useful for cutting to a dramatic shot and the choral singing creates an atmosphere of heightened tension.
It has been used 28 times in trailers for Dante’s Peak (1997), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), The Last Castle (2001), The Mummy Returns (2001) and The Ring (2002).
2. Fire in a Brooklyn Theatre from Come See The Paradise (1990) by Randy Edelman (Used 27 times): Not many people remember Alan Parker’s drama about the treatment of Japanese people in America following the attack on Pearl Harbor, but one track from Randy Edelman’s score has been used in plenty of trailers as an action cue.
Again, urgency is the key here with the insistent rhythm and pounding keyboards creating the impression that what you are watching is dramatic and important. Ironically, this is musically out of step with the rest of film but studio marketing departments seem to love it, especially for weighty dramas with high stakes, which means it has appeared in trailers for The Chamber (1996), Clear and Present Danger (1994), A Few Good Men (1992), Rob Roy (1995) and Thirteen Days (2000).
3. Tightwire from Immediate Music (Used 26 times): The trailer music specialists are at it again with this fast, orchestral cue which screams urgency and a sense that something big is about to happen (i.e. a bomb about to go off), creating the illusion that you’re seeing something important and dramatic.
This is probably the reason why it has been used in trailers for The Avengers (1998), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Leprechaun 2 (1994), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and What Lies Beneath (2000).
4. Naked Prey by Immediate Music (Used 25 times): Another track from Immediate Music, this cue automatically signifies urgent action with its quick beats and pounding rhythm.
Film trailers it has been used in include: Along Came a Spider (2001), The Beach (2000), The Constant Gardener (2005), The Mummy (1999) and Waterworld (1995).
5. Bishop’s Countdown from Aliens (1986) by James Horner (Used 24 times): James Horner’s score to James Cameron’s sequel to Alien (1979) was composed under extreme time constraints and pressure. But it features perhaps the most memorable trailer cue ever, taken from the climax to the film as Ripley fights the Alien queen.
The sounds of pounding metal, interweaving strings and perfectly judged brass all build to a monumental crescendo. It works so brilliantly that it appears in plenty of trailers including Alien 3 (1992), Broken Arrow (1996), Dante’s Peak (1997), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and Minority Report (2002).
UPDATE 07/04/2011: After Roger Ebert tweeted about this post (thanks Roger!) there was a lot of traffic and some excellent suggestions in the comments below.
Some are more modern examples of music that has been re-purposed for use in trailers.
Michael Williams suggests Steve Jablonsky‘s theme My Name is Lincoln from Michael Bay’s The Island (2005), which most people probably remember for its use in the trailer for Avatar (2009):
What’s interesting about this one is that it is used for the first minute of the trailer and was probably chosen for the spacey, sci-fi vibe.
Another suggestion from Fax Paladin was the track “St Crispin’s Day” from Patrick Doyle’s score to Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (1989). Click forward to 2.37 to hear the specific cue, which is used when Henry give the Band of Brothers speech.
I’m not exactly sure what it has been used for, but it sounds familiar and the rousing strings around 4.22 certainly have that uplifting quality you often see in a good trailer.
Although the film wasn’t a box office hit for The Coen Brothers, the moving strings and charming melodies make it perfect for creating a mood in a trailer.
Aronofsky told me in 2008 that Mansell was initially unhappy about this use of his music, but it caught on and quickly became a staple of various trailers and ads including The Da Vinci Code (2006), Sunshine (2007), and even Sky Sports News (it was also the theme for Soccer Saturday from 2007-2009)
Kevin Bingham suggests a track from John Murphy’s score to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007), which combines an absolutely epic mix of strings, electronic beats and piano.
Chris Knight suggests the track “Archer Solomon Hike” from James Newton Howard’s score to Blood Diamond (2006):
I can’t quite put my finger on what trailers have used it but the moody strings certainly fit that quiet/reflective moments in a trailer.
Dave suggests Basil Pouledoris’ main theme for Conan the Barbarian (1982). Listen to the opening part:
The rhythm and melody sound very familiar and create a vibe of impending doom in a foreign land. It also sounds like Jerry Goldsmith’s main theme for Total Recall (1990), another film which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This is the first trailer for Attack the Block, the new horror-comedy directed by Joe Cornish about aliens attacking a council estate in South East London.
Is it just me, or does it seem like a gigantic piss-take of Noel Clarke‘s films?
Attack the Block comes out on in the UK on Friday 13th May
The first trailer for the upcoming prequel X-Men First Class is here.
Set during the 1960s, it explores Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and the early days of their respective groups, the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, it also stars Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Lucas Till and will be released on June 3rd.
The trailer for Terrence Malick’s latest film The Tree of Life has surfaced online.
Set in the 1950s, it is the story of an eleven-year-old boy named Jack (Hunter McCracken) growing up in the Midwest with his father (Brad Pitt) and mother (Jessica Chastain), and his life as an older man (Sean Penn).
The first trailer for The Beaver has arrived with a weird voiceover and an unexpected feel-good vibe.
A dark comedy about the depressed head of a toy company (Mel Gibson) who uses a beaver handpuppet to communicate with his wife (Jodie Foster) and family, it has an interesting back story.
Directed by Foster, the script by Kyle Killen attracted a lot of buzz by topping the 2008 Blacklist, an unofficial industry poll of the best unproduced screenplays.
However, Gibson’s recent phone-related meltdowns posed a dilemma for distributor Summit Entertainment and the release was put on hold whilst they decided to let things cool down.
The UK release date has already been set for February 11th and a Spring release in the US now looks likely.
Some things to note about the trailer: if you look carefully you’ll notice Jennifer Lawrence (a likely Oscar nominee for Winter’s Bone); Gibson’s beaver voice sounds like Ray Winstone; and Foster’s line near the end (“I’ll fight for you…”) feels autobiographical given her support for Gibson during his recent woes.
The first trailer for Cowboys and Aliens came out today, the upcoming sci-fi western directed by Jon Favreau, which stars Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde and Sam Rockwell.
The upcoming drama Rabbit Hole stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as a couple dealing with a sudden loss and is directed by John Cameron Mitchell from a script by David Lindsay-Abaire, adapted from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
It opens in the US on December 17th and a UK release is TBC
Narrated by Matt Damon, it features interviews with key politicians, bankers and journalists and arrives as one of the most acclaimed documentaries to come out of this year’s festival circuit.
Ferguson also recently spoke to Variety in Toronto about the film:
Inside Job is showing at selected US cinemas now and opens in the UK on February 18th 2011
The first trailer for Danny Boyle’s new film 127 Hours has been released.
It is based on the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston (James Franco) who went through a gruelling ordeal involving a fallen boulder in an isolated canyon in Utah.
Fox Searchlight have released the first full length trailer for Black Swan, the new film from director Darren Aronofsky about two ballet dancers (Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis) in a New York production of Swan Lake.
It opens the Venice Film Festival later this month and is likely to be an awards season contender.
This is the trailer for Cadência, a new documentary from director Daren Bartlett.
An exploration of Rio de Janeiro‘s sport and culture, it examines the country’s cadence (‘Cadência’) – the rhythm and true spirit of Brazil – and tries to capture the city’s identity through its citizens, passions and traditions, with commentary from academics, artists, and footballers.
If you are in London, the film is being showcased and supported with an exhibition at the 1948 Nike Store in Shoreditch from 25th March to 25th April.