Less Is More

One of the reasons I am always early is that I hate feeling like I've missed anything, ever. This is why I get to sporting events well before the National Anthem and never miss the trailers before the movies. In fact, given the quality of movies I have been watching lately, the trailers may be the best part of the movie-going experience. That is why even I can't believe I am saying this, but they are starting to get a little too long. They used to be a minute, but now they are closer to three and they show way too much of the movie. I've been saying for years that the people who make movie trailers should work on scaling them back. Far too often the trailer for a new movie shows you all you need to know including plot twists, subsequently killing any desire for you to spend the money to see the movie in the theaters. I understand wanting to proudly display all your hard work, but movies are a lot more fun when you don't know how they are going to end. Also, I would rather they give away fewer details than flat-out lie to us by either focusing on the biggest names, even when they are only in the movie for a few minutes (I'm looking at you, "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" with all the shots of Bruce Willis) or worse, editing it in such a way as to make us think it is a different kind of movie. This just happened with the new Tina Fey movie, "Admission". From the trailer you think it is your typical romantic comedy, only it's more about the fact the kid in the movie is her long-lost son that she gave up for adoption years ago. I'm not saying that's a bad idea for a movie, but sounds heavy for people who may be on their first date or who think they are in for a laugh riot.

What they need to do is take a page from the people who make commercials for TV shows, because those get right down to it. Their airtime is valuable and the executives know they could make more money by selling it to an advertiser instead of telling you to watch another one of their shows, so the promos are cut down to the nuts and bolts and if they can mix it into a show instead of commercial time all the better. If you ever hear a sports anchor read a promo for a show during a time-out you can tell by their tone that they hate having to do it and probably demand it be kept to a sentence or two at most. (What's funny is that if you pay attention you can tell how much power an anchor has by how long the promos he has to read are. The well-established guys tell you the show title, when it is on and that is it. The middle guys may have to tell you this week's plot, while the new guy does everything short of acting out a scene.) But, regardless of the amount of copy it still has to be crammed into a 60-second time-out, which means the writers must learn to keep the details scarce. What is nice is that this has slowly started to seep onto channels which aren't even showing sports, because regardless of the network show promos are brief and to the point. Heck, sometime you don't even need the promo and can learn everything you need to know from the show title.

The other day I was flipping around and landed on the Investigation Discovery Channel, or ID. Now, if you have never wandered passed this station while desperately hunting for entertainment, I'll sum it up for you - it is pretty much 24 hours of real-life murder mystery shows. No, really. It's just true stories of crime, most of which took years to solve and featuring interviews with the detectives. Now, you may be thinking that there can't possibly be enough of these shows to fill out a TV line-up for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Sadly, that is where you would be wrong. Not only are does this network have plenty of crimes to showcase, they can get really specific on the kinds of crimes you will hear about by dividing them into really specialized shows. I was using my cable guide the other night and saw a show called, "Prenup to Murder", about wives who killed their rich husbands rather than divorce them. If that isn't your style you can always watch "Deadly Dates" about people who went on dates with murders, "I Killed My BFF" (do I need to tell you what that one is about?) or "My Deadly Sister" which also feels rather self-explanatory. This is where the ability to quickly get your point across comes in handy. Not only do I not need to sit through an extended trailer to get an idea of what I would be watching, I barely have to finish reading the show's title and all my questions are answered.

[Sidebar: I understand that we live in an age when people can get any form of entertainment they wish delivered right to them and they can have it tailored to their needs before it arrives. Also, being able to be picky is what makes this country great - people simply aren't going to compromise from what they want, so if a network wants their attention they had better make a version of a popular show that is even more focused on a group of people, which is it's why we have 10 different shows about Real Housewives and 15 singing competitions. That being said, maybe we don't want to encourage murder enthusiasts to seek out people with similar tastes. Last week I had a post about how the commercials which air during your favorite shows are a window into the way advertisers assume you act. At the time I said you shouldn't take it personally because it paints everyone with too broad a brush, but watching hours upon hours of murder documentaries doesn't send a very good message either. We are all allowed a guilty pleasure show which is out of the ordinary for our normal viewing habits, but if your girlfriend has every episode of "Deadly Women" on her DVR you may want to starting thinking of an exit strategy.]

Now, obviously a movie can't get you to come to the theater just by telling you its name, especially if it's one of those pretentious films which has a name that has nothing to do with anything. They have to give a few details or else people are going to be unwilling to take such a large leap of faith. But, just because they need to work harder to sell themselves to us doesn't mean they need to give away the whole movie either. I feel like the answer, as it always is, can be found in the middle ground. Just give us an idea of the plot, the main stars and either an action sequence or a joke depending on the genre of movie and that should be more than enough to reel people in. Honestly, curiosity can be a better sales tactic than facts. At the very least they need to start putting out trailers which are more honest. Tricking your consumers is just going to make them view the movie in a bad light anyway and no amount of cool editing can overcome bad word-of-mouth. Remember, people can always choose to stay home instead. Not only do I have no doubts they will be able to find something else to entertain them that night, I'm pretty sure it will be pretty specific to their interests, no matter how odd they might be.