Coming Attractions
By Kirk Honeycutt
"Coming Attractions" is the most exciting, magnificent,
super-colossal, awe-inspiring, heartwarming, blood-stirring
movie ever made!!! Sorry, I think I've been looking at too
many movie trailers.
Well, try out this honest hyperbole: Nothing has sold more
movies to the American public, going back to the birth of
the medium, than the movie trailer. "Attractions"
is a one-of-a-kind documentary about the history and methodology
of making trailers, produced by the Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation.
Strictly speaking, this is an archival and educational film.
Legal clearance makes showing the film in theaters or on television
far too expensive. Which is a pity since the movie's entertainment
value is every bit as high as its instructional value.
But then, why should we be surprised? Here is a movie that
draws upon some of the most entertaining shorts ever exhibited
in movie houses -- a vast array of coming attractions dating
back to the silent era. The film made a rare public appearance
Tuesday at UCLA's James Bridges Theater. The screening celebrated
a donation of $750,000 by the foundation to the UCLA School
of Theater, Film and Television to expand its media marketing
curriculum.
Smoothly hosted by The Hollywood Reporter's Robert Osborne,
the film is smartly divided into two parts. The first deals
with the development of movie advertising from the days of
Thomas Edison through the late '50s. The second half deals
with the reinvention of the trailer along with the introduction
of nonlinear digital editing, then concludes with a brief
primer on how trailers are made.
As the word might suggest, "trailers" were originally
shown after a movie program to advertise upcoming attractions.
These were text-only advertisements. The first trailer we
would recognize as such, the "Animated Herald" or
scene trailer, emerged around 1915. Paramount was the first
studio to make trailers for its own films on separate reels
that were shown before the main program. The year 1919 saw
the formation of the National Screen Service, the now almost
forgotten company that held a virtual monopoly on trailers
and movie advertising for more than 40 years.
The trailers of the '30s, '40s and into the '50s were extravaganzas
of editing and hyperbole. Critic-historian Leonard Maltin
cites the trailer for "Ben-Hur" as the most overstated
ever. After watching it, few would disagree. One type of trailer
that emerged then was the "hosted" trailer, in which
an actor appearing in character or a name director such as
Cecil B. DeMille or Alfred Hitchcock walked an audience through
an upcoming movie. The optical printer, invented in 1933,
ushered in visual effects such as wipes and dissolves that
we now associate with that "golden era" of movie
trailers.
But the formula of con and kitsch grew tired by the '60s and
ill-fit the more cutting-edge kinds of films coming out of
Hollywood. The three pioneers of the new movie trailer were
Saul Bass, who introduced graphic design and the key art concept
to "The Man With the Golden Arm"; Pablo Ferro, whose
trailer for "Dr. Strangelove" brought Madison Avenue
slickness to the fore; and, of course, Andy Kuehn, whose trailer
for "The Night of the Iguana" still hits viewers
with its shock edits. Today, the Avid has further revolutionized
trailers, making the editing process vastly more liquid.
"Attractions" doesn't shy away from contemporary
controversies: The "fire all the guns" approach
has resulted in too many look-alike trailers. Many other trailers
give away too much story. And market research often dictates
how to make trailers, which doesn't sit well with trailer
makers. The film barely has time to do more than hint at the
future that looms with the Internet and with video games,
which are now major clients for trailer makers.
Written by Frederick L. Greene and directed by Michael J.
Shapiro, "Coming Attractions" packs a lot of information
into 128 minutes. (Jeff Werner directed Osborne as well as
directing and editing "The Making of a Trailer"
sequence.) But this is information that brings a smile to
our faces. Which befits any movie starring Moses, King Kong,
Hitchcock, Godzilla, Gable and Colbert, Taylor and Burton
and a cast of thousands.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation
Credits:
Director/editorial supervisor: Michael J. Shapiro
Writer: Frederick L. Greene
Additional written material: Scott McIsaac
Producer: Stephen J. Netburn
Executive producer: Will Gorges
Photographers: Jose Luis Mignone, Bruce Schultz, Edgar Llamas,
Eric Engler
Editor: Dirk Meenen
Host/narrator: Robert Osborne
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 128 minutes
Copyright 2005 The Hollywood Reporter
