BOURNE LEGACY TRAILER: No Bourne, No Ludlam, No Sequel, No Prequel

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Frederick Greene

The new Bourne Legacy, slated for Aug. 10th release is not based on the book of the same name by Eric Van Lustbader, “official” heir to Robert Ludlam‘s novelistic career; it does not feature the character Jason Bourne; it does not star Matt Damon, but rather Jeremy Remmer as Aaron Cross, a new CIA agent in the “universe based on Robert Ludlam’s novels.” (Wikipedia) It is not a sequel, nor a prequel, but rather a lateral move, exploring other strands of the “Treadstone” program.

As I hope to have indicated, the marketers of this film face a variety of challenges given the broad and enthusiastic fan-base for the first three Bourne films who may, not-unreasonably, be expecting development of a plotline and character with whom they were well-acquainted and deeply invested. (Did I also mention that this film has a different director than the ones starring Mr. Damon?) The problem, it seems to me, is how to transfer the desire and expectation of the Bourne/Ludlam audience from the pleasures of known source material featuring a familiar character played by a beloved and bona-fide movie-star to the generic pleasures of a similar and associated world, featuring a new character played by a distinguished but less well known actor.

Let’s review the trailer in terms of the story it tells and sells to see how–or whether–Universal’s marketing team and the trailermakers it hired accomplish their objectives.

At 1:54, the trailer is composed of two acts. The first is structured as a series of questions and interrogations through which an initially disoriented and physically damaged Cross (Renner) is identified, healed and prepared for his role as a CIA assassin. In the second act, Cross breaks out of the clinic/facility in which Act I appears to have taken place (whether this is true to the film story, I am unable to say) and demonstrates the success of his training, determination and skill. Our knowledge of the film and its character is conveyed through assertions by those I presume to be his CIA handlers/scientists/managers. The trailer concludes with action shots of Cross in the wilderness fending off capture, prior to the title design and release date card.

In this second act, a copy card (the only one in the trailer) tells us that “THERE WAS NEVER JUST ONE.” An off-screen voice notes that “Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg,” followed by handler/trainer Ed Norton who explains that “he’s an Outcome agent” to an exasperated senior official. A female manager specifies that “It’s Treadstone without the inconsistency,” before sharing her astonishment that “we’ve never seen evaluations like these.”

Admittedly, much of this explanation requires familiarity with the series of films or movies (Treadstone, Outcome, Evaluations, Bourne, etc.), but even the casual movie goer will understand the generic cues indicating state security, secret programs, rogue agents and, perhaps, rogue agencies. From the trailer, even the unitiated can deduce that Cross, a product of a secret program, has gone off the reservation and now constitutes a threat to those responsible for his selection and training.

With respect to how the trailer rises to its various marketing challenges, Graphic Design and Copy do the heavy lifting. Design, which typically plays a supporting role, is foregrounded through a split screen (or as I call it “strip” screen) approach to revealing visual information that is more than merely “cool;” it expressly implies a model of interpretation. It’s not until 1:07 that we see a full-screen shot. Prior to that, only fractions of the screen are disclosed through an optical effects process that operates left to right, right to left, up and down and down and up to reveal fragments of faces and parts of shots. We are seeing/receiving only partial story information, character detail and context.

After the profile reveal of Renner, now healed of his initial bruises and lesions and transformed into a resolute, confident killer out of the disoriented, damaged raw material he once was, the screen blackens by a shutter effect: the strips into which the screen is divided narrow as if window blinds are being angled down. The result it to darken and mystify, to block the light of disclosure, the disinfecting sunshine of knowledge.  Of course, this is a film of intrigue after all, a murky world where neither the hero nor the audience fully understand events, circumstances or consequences until the end, if then.

The copy line– which I’ve noticed on teaser posters around town (LA) featuring no visual elements besides white lettering on a black background– is insistently plural in meaning. There was never just one Agent (of the Jason Bourne variety and Treadstone program). There was never just one book. There was never just one series of films. There was never just one author, director, or star. Although the first explanation is most salient, the others hover in the background, given the indeterminacy of the noun “one.”

Indeed, it’s a brilliant line, since it confronts the obvious weakness of the series reboot and converts it into a strength. Operation Treadstone always contemplated other agents in the Bourne mold. Cross is Bourne’s legacy: “Treadstone without the inconsistency,” as described verbatim in film dialogue. Secret programs are multiple and compartmentalized in order to maximize their viability and likelihood of success. Ludlam’s world is wider and more complicated than even his devoted reader will have imagined, which perhaps explains why Lustbader was obliged to continue his books.

So then, given this clever, reasonable and pursuasive explanation for why we have a new character, new star, new plot, etc., in a series with an old and venerable name, what are the selling points that might induce a Bourne fan or a Bourne virgin to see the Bourne Legacy? Well, obviously, the genre: a spy thriller with a Byzantine plot and likely surprises, both for the protagonist as well as the audience. This is the Ludlam brand and from the trailer, it appears to be maintained and extended.

The film features a quality cast of Oscar caliber players, including Joan Allen, Ed Norton, Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Albert Finney and David Straitharn, none of whom are named as such, but all of whom are recognizable as “that star” or “that actor.”

And, the Bourne Legacy offers action, violence and suspense, on a big budget with high production values.

In the title sequence, which comes after a full screen shot of Cross firing at an airplane is reduced by the strip-screen process to just his eye, we see layers of white letters onto which scenes of the film are superimposed flying through the air and compressing into the solid, white letters of the title. It’s yet another visual reminder of the thematic matrix of the series and the books on which it is based: fragments, pieces, layers and perspectives kaleidoscoping, combining and being “read” or “interpreted” in order for anything approaching order, story and understanding to emerge.

Have the marketers met their challenge? Even if audiences yearn from Mr. Damon, Mr. Greengrass and Mr. Ludlam, none of whom are involved here, I think the trailer heralds cinematic pleasures and story complications that will reward and agreeably confound fans of the inscrutable Bourne world. But do see the trailer for yourselves.

Creative Commons License
movietrailers101 by Fred Greene is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Readings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

BLOOPERS & OUTTAKES: Trailers By Another Name and From Another Angle

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Frederick Greene

THE LION KING (1994) A Case Study

Did you know that the first trailer editors were obliged to work from outtakes? That’s because the negative was too costly/precious, and so the montage editors who got conscripted into movie marketing (circa the 1920’s, within the Unit Man era of National Screen Service dominance) used what was available from dailies, cutting together odds and ends from production, using copy and title cards to conceal the rough edges.

Into the ever expanding category of a/v promotional materials for films, tv and video games– what I generically call trailers, or “commercial films about other films”– I want to place the phenomenon of bloopers and outtakes, these behind-the-scenes, ancillary, purportedly “leaked” but tacitly, often explicitly approved a/v elements of production that are shared with the audience, providing information and awareness alongside engagement and the simulacrum of insider access to the “glamorous” process of making films, tv shows or video games.

This is marketing folks, not “found video” or unauthorized or accidental. These are materials that position the “product,” incite interest in the audience and provide thematic, cast, stylistic (among other qualities) information about it. Most of the time, they are released by the distributor and its marketing department as bonus material, rather than “leaked” to an unconsecrated outsider who then posts them on youtube. Recall, that if the legitimate owner of branded content and IP doesn’t want it posted, it can request the materials be removed, a result I’ve seen too often to doubt. In other words, when you seeing bloopers and outtakes, odds are that what you’re seeing is not an expose or an accident, but intentional and strategic.

Let’s look at an extreme case of bloopers/outtakes released by the Walt Disney Company in support of The Lion King.

I call this an extreme case, because although this video is described as “bloopers and outtakes,” it’s actually a trailer, released by Walt Disney in 2011 to support the Blu-ray release of the film on DVD. How do I know? Well, since we’re talking about an animated film, bloopers aren’t possible: someone had to draw these filmed “mistakes,” which is to say that they aren’t mistakes at all. Secondly, below the video post, Disney offers a compelling synopsis of the film, provides the Amazon url, where you buy the “Diamond Edition” blu-ray dvd, and invites viewers to join its facebook page.

To speak with greater precision, this video is a re-release trailer, exploiting familiarity with the product (a blockbuster film, after all and a favorite for families with kids) while offering materials “never before seen” to update the marketing message and change the positioning from epic, inspiring and heart-wrenching animal kingdom drama to cuddly, goofy laugh-fest.

In this 1:09 second film, four simulated “behind-the-scenes” scenes are presented, introduced by the identical opening shot and music cue from the original trailer, followed by an image of the DVD, with the text “First Time in Disney 3D, Fall 2011.” In the first scene, Mufasa is slated by an offscreen voice as he prepares to roar. Unfortunately, he’s not in “full voice” just yet, so his efforts are laughable. In the second, Timon, the Meekat, after riding Pumbaa the Warthog into a scrum of vultures, shoos away the carrion birds incurring a groin pull, at which he laughs at his own physical misery. (Are groin pulls funny? Apparently for the audience that appreciates Warthog farts, they must be.) Scene three shows two Hyenas, one laughing. She breaks character to note that her laughter “comes in spurts,” at which a voice off- screen–the director, presumably?– says “that’s great.” Lastly, Timon appears again, licking his fingers, then choking on something disgusting he ate, breaking character to say, “I must have got a bad crumb.”

In this blooper/outtake trailer, there is no story presentation, production information, cast run, or explicit appeal, apart from the charm of the animation and the adorableness of the characters. It relies instead on the recognizable quality and established appeal of this Disney favorite, while advertising its availability in a new format. Its chief departure from the original campaign, however, is in positioning, as I mentioned above.

Most bloopers and outtakes are not this calculated, designed and produced. Indeed, part of the charm is their rough, unrendered, un-edited reality.
Like a featurette (see my recent post on the subject), bloopers/outtakes deliver branded content from the position of behind-the-scenes proximity. In their presentation of movie stars breaking character, flubbing lines, missing cues, badly acting, goofing around and having fun on set, they are disarming and ingratiating. They offer the audience access to a world behind what is normally experienced as a seamless, glittering, edited and polished, and in that way they allow connection, identification and investment, especially if the stars/actors are already beloved or esteemed.


DATE NIGHT BLOOPERS/OUTTAKES

Consider this blooper/outtake reel from the 2010 comedy, Date Night, starring Tina Fey and Steve Carell. As a collection of what appear to be (and I have no reason to doubt, really are) bloopers and outtakes, this compilation shows recognizable stars (James Franco, too)in candid, hilarious moments from the filming of the movie. It’s a clip show, of sorts, scenes from the film, that while they won’t be in the actual film, convey style, sensibility, comedy and characterization. We don’t know the premise or the resolution, but we do know that appealing popular comic actors Fey and Carell will be portraying a husband and wife on a misadventure in the big city.

Those who watch bloopers and outtakes are presumed to know what the film is about and this additional material is intended to satisfy their craving for further insight. Typically, unlike in the Lion King example above, the blooper reel is neither slick nor smooth, and that’s precisely its charm. Hollywood, raises the curtain on what filmmaking is “really like” and we, unreconstructed voyeurs that we are, are seduced, delighted, entertained and sold.

Creative Commons License
movietrailers101 by Fred Greene is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Introductory and Reference Post, Readings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Featurette: A Long Trailer and A Short Documentary

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Frederick Greene

FEATURETTES:
Back in the 70’s, featurettes were commonplace marketing adjuncts for important or significant feature films. They were shown on TV (where else, in those benighted days before the intertubes), helping to flesh out the broadcast minutes that a movie-of-the-week might leave unfilled.

And then, they went away during the ’80’s My friend, the veteran trailer maker and former studio executive Mike Shapiro, tells me that he “witnessed not an obsolesence but a transition to shorter behind the scenes films that were included in the newly emerging publicity package called electronic press kits (EPK’s), in the early 80’s.” He continues: “TV broadcast programmers got better at filling every second of each time slot and longer form stand-alone featurettes became too expensive but…. a form of featurettes still is and will remain a marketing tool especially for bigger budget releases.”

Since the arrival of laser-discs and DVD in late 80’s and 90’s, featurettes, now categorized as “bonus material,” made a comeback. Now, I’d venture to say, they are more popular and commonplace than ever before, given the proliferation of venues for their exhibition. Broadcast and cable TV may not screen them as they once did, but they are ubiquitous on DVD’s and video sharing websites, and a staple of the marketing materials routinely generated for a feature film campaign.

In fact, shows like Access Hollywood and their ilk, rely on the footage and access that will otherwise go into making a featurette or EPK. The relatively low cost of videography and the surplus of hungry and talented young filmmakers makes it all the more easy and cost-efficient to document the making of a film, any film. Their length, detail and behind the scenes insights makes them a desirable ancillary for producers and distributors competing for ever more knowledgeable and interested audiences. For their part, media journalists repurpose the footage and the comments/quotes of stars, filmmakers and production staff that they provide and appreciate the “back-stage” gossip that they retail or make “visible.”

Ok, so that said, let me remind the reader that a featurette, as its name suggests, is a “diminutive” feature, a smaller, more adorable version of the feature, that typically documents its making for the purposes of highlighting its saleable qualities. Featurettes are not made as critical exposes, but rather as part of the variety of materials used to herald, promote, tease, inform and advertise a film. If a trailer is a sample of the film (and those regular readers will recognize how poor and inexact a definition that is!), then a featurette is a document of and about the feature as a film.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES OFFICIAL FEATURETTE, Written/produced by Richard Brehm
Let’s take a look at the recently released featurette for the Dark Knight Rises, which at 13:28, is a not inconsiderable piece of moviemaking and marketing. Given the length and complexity of the featurette, this is not the place for a shot by shot or scene by scene analysis (I can hear your sighs of relief through the intertubes), but I would like to describe its structure, its emphasis on story and argument, and its function as a piece of movie marketing. Right. Let’s begin.

OVERVIEW:
Given its function as the concluding film in a series of three, The Dark Knight Rises has to accomplish a few different objectives. Whether it does, remains to be seen, but the marketing has the privilege of asserting it, regardless. First, it must establish continuity with its predecessors, and in production design, actors, directors, soundscape (MTV just posted a track by track analysis.) and sensibility. Judging by the featurette and the trailer, it clearly does.

Second, this is movie making on the grandest scale and the featurette demonstrates this film’s membership in that rarified league. But, unlike other Summer blockbusters that are all spectacle and inane story, or visual thrill without emotional gravity, the Nolan Batman films have delivered character study and emotional impact alongside visual delight. According to the featurette, audiences can expect that same combination of surface and substance, a point made repeatedly in consistent language from various commentators: “it’s big, but emotional and intimate.”

This film is obliged, as well, to provide closure, completion, and resolution to the various open ended plot and characterological vectors of the previous films. We don’t exactly get to see how, but completion/closural achievement is asserted, and I think it’s believable.

Lastly, this film has to raise the stakes: in terms of scale, emotional power, character development/completion and visual spectacle. We can judge from the trailer and the featurette that at least some of those expectations will be met, especially those of scale and spectacle. But, given the quality of the cast, direction and production, I think it’s safe to assume that the effort is made successfully.

STRUCTURE
The featurette has, by my count five sections, including an introduction, a conclusion, and segments on cast and characters, spectacle and scale, and production personnel responsible for the visual achievement. There is overlap among each section, since the stars, producers and director Nolan throughout do talking head duty. Similarly certain thematic concerns and marketing appeals are made regularly and insistently: remember, although this film purports to be about the making of the film and its role as the third of a blockbuster series of cinematic realizations of a cultural significant myth (i.e. Batman), this is ultimately a trailer, serving movie marketing imperatives. A featurette needs to stay “on message,” and this one does.

ACT I: INTRODUCTION
The trailer starts with scenes from the film. Bruce Wayne/Batman, played by Christian Bale dances with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), aka Catwoman. We see Bane (Tom Hardy), the arch-villain, escape in-transit from an airplane and organize the assault on Gotham, from which Batman has been absent for the past 8 years. We learn that the film, in Director Christopher Nolan’s words, is the construction of an “elemental conflict between good and evil,” in which the stakes, the scale and the spectacle have been pushed to a whole new level. In other words, this is a bigger, more serious Batman. Producers Charles Roven and Emma Thomas add their two cents worth, hitting similar notes in agreement with Nolan.

ACT II: The Cast/The Characters
In this section we see and hear from Batman, Bane, Selina Kyle, police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Wayne Enterprises Board member and friend of Bruce, Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), Alfred the butler, the emotional center of the film (the inimitable Michael Caine), Lucius the scientist/inventor/CEO of Wayne Enterprises (Morgan Freeman) and Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman). All explain their roles, character traits and objectives, which conduce to the larger argument of the featurette: to wit, this is big, serious, culturally resonant filmmaking and the fitting conclusion to a box office powerhouse and critically esteemed series of films, all by Nolan.

ACT III/IV: SPECTACLE/SCALE/PRODUCTION TALENT
These two sections are integrated, so perhaps it’s cheating to distinguish them. That said, in this, the longest section of the featurette, we learn about the visual magic of this film by meeting and learning from the various distinguished creatives responsible. Production Designer Nathan Crowley; FX Supervisor Chris Corbould, Director of Photography, Wally Pfister; Paul Franklin, Visual Effects Supervisor, play show and tell with the look, the gadgets, the stunts and the extra-intensive crowd scenes. Models, diagrams, prototypes, etc., are featured to deliver “behind the scenes” insights and information. (Note: This section sold me on the movie, whose trailer I found ideologically problematic, when I discussed it back in the Fall.)

ACT V: WRAP UP/ BUTTON
In the fifth section of the featurette, the various strands of the argument are brought together: Characters, spectacle and production talent fuse into a climax that begins with valedictory remarks from our talking heads before heading into a quick-cut, exhilarating back end that uses the cinematographic power and appeal of scenes and dialogue to link the claims of the featurette with the marketing appeal of the film. We hear that The Dark Knight Rises is big, but emotionally intimate and affecting, and that the saga has come full circle. We are told to anticipate closure and advised that a “great story deserves a great ending,” a tautology that’s meant to characterize this release.

But the final words of the trailer belong to the characters, Batwoman and Batman. She: “You’ve given these people everything,” she says, bitterly, urging him, presumably, to save himself. “Not Everything….Not Yet,” he grimly predicts. It’s a line that applies both to the diegetic world of the film and to the context within which The Dark Knight Rises is being released. Neither Bane, nor audiences, have seen what Batman and director Nolan, can do, which is a very compelling argument for why we have to see the movie.

Of all of the comic book movies, I like Batman (both the 80/90’s iteration and Nolan’s) the best. And this short film is a beautifully done featurette: it’s tight, coherent, compelling and visually stunning. It makes a strong case for the quality of the film being advertised.

Creative Commons License
movietrailers101 by Fred Greene is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted in Introductory and Reference Post, Readings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment