Surfing around the Internet last week I stumbled across a promotional trailer for Christie, the motion picture projector manufacturer. The new trailer (see below) can be found on Christie Digital’s YouTube channel. To date, it has been viewed 280 times since it was uploaded on January 14th. The trailer is 25 seconds long and promotes Christie’s line of digital cinema projectors powered by DLP chips. It seems 3D content was taken into consideration during its production.
With the conversion to digital the number of equipment manufacturers that can be found in any given projection booth has potentially doubled. This could potentially lead to at least two minutes worth of preshow for d-cinema vendors, promoting servers, projectors and 3D technology. This isn’t even taking into account satellite content delivery providers, integrators or theatre management system developers. And I’m sure I’m leaving someone important out.
Have a look at Chrisitie’s new trailer and let us know what you think.
Popularity: 6% [?]
We’re all familiar with the awards such as the Oscars which are given out to the movies and filmmakers that become critical darlings in the United States each year. However what praise is ever heaped on the short films made specifically to promote such films. As it turns out, there is indeed a special award given out to those who make the year’s best trailers; the Golden Trailer Award. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, this year’s awards show was held at the Directors Guild of America this past Thursday and the trailer for “Star Trek” produced by Aspect Ratio took home the top two prizes - the Summer 2009 Blockbuster Award and the Best In Show Award.
Described as “an open competition”, this year’s top trailers were selected by such industry notables as actress Rosario Dawson, writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, television director Paul Feig, author Dade Hayes, Los Angeles Times film critic Kennth Turan, author and journalist Frank Santopadre, producer Jonathan Gray and producing team Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg.
The program kicked off with a quick cut montage with highlights from the previous nine years awards show. The clips wound up serving as a stark contrast for how toned down this year’s festivities were due in large part to the current economic recession impacting the show’s budget. At least the evening’s host, “Saturday Night Live” comedian Dean Edwards, managed to keep the show moving at a pretty decent clip (no pun intended).
Actually, awards shows such as the Oscars could learn a thing or two from the Golden Trailer Awards when it comes to expediency - 17 awards were presented in about 90 minutes. Read More »
Popularity: 11% [?]
From the moment Dreamworks Animation first announced that it would run a 3D trailer for it’s March release “Monsters. vs. Aliens” during Super Bowl XLIII everyone working in the entertainment industry took notice, especially those in distribution and exhibition. Now that the big game is over and sports pundits have begun recapping every play, marketing experts and the public at large will spend the next several days discussing which Super Bowl commercials worked, which were forgettable and which were downright embarrassing. This year, Dreamworks’ 1:30 second trailer for “Monsters vs. Aliens” will definitely be one of the ads which is hotly debated in regards to whether it helped or hindered the film it was meant to promote, specifically because it aired in 3D.
Certainly the Super Bowl telecast is no stranger to advertising stunts, though not all of them turnout as expected. (remember Budweiser’s Bud Bowl?). Over the years, giving moviegoers a first glimpse of upcoming tent pole releases during the Super Bowl has become an important part of many blockbusters’ marketing campaigns, not to mention one of the most expensive parts. Ads for this years Super Bowl cost USD $3 million for a 30 second spot.
Nobody needs to be told, at least nobody in the United States, that the Super Bowl has become a premiere event for launching advertising campaigns. In fact, it may be the single most important event in the North American ad world each year. During the last four decades numerous memorable television spots first aired during the Super Bowl. In 1973 Master Lock set the bar by firing a bullet through it’s product. Coca-Cola, a perennial Super Bowl advertiser had a huge hit with it’s spot featuring hall-of-famer Mean Joe Green in 1979. Beer commercials, such as Budweiser’s “True” spots, have also been a big hit through years. But by far, the most referenced Super Bowl commercial of all time was Apple’s 1984 ad to introduce the Macintosh computer. The spot, which first aired 25 years ago, is still deemed one of the most successful ads to ever run during the telecast, even though it never even showed the product.
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Popularity: 32% [?]
David Pogue, the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times, is taking Hollywood studios to task for putting content in their movie trailers that doesn’t actually appear in their movies. On Thursday, Pogue wrote a post in his blog on the Times’ website blasting the trailer for ‘National Treasure: Book of Secrets‘ for containing shots and scenes which did not make the film and depicting scenes completely out of context. He gave several examples, including but not limited to:
- The trailer showing shots of Egyptian landmarks, though none of the movie takes place in Egypt;
- A shot flying over Mount Rushmorein the trailer which does not appear in the film;
- Shots of the movie’s star, Nicolas Cage, at the Lincoln Memorial shown in the trailer do not wind up in the film;
- The trailer showing a character portraying the President of the United States dramatically telling Cage he is on the N.S.A., C.I.A. and F.B.I.’s most wanted list, but the scene does not exist in the finished movie.
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Popularity: 12% [?]
Monday night the film industry may have figured out a way to combat a growing problem faced by most television advertisers; time shifting. Wikipedia, that bastion of all things completely true and accurate, defines “time shifting” as:
“the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to at a time more convenient to the consumer. Typically, this refers to TV programming but can also refer to radio shows via podcasts.”
While time shifting may be all the rage these days, I’ve been doing it since September of 2003 when I first purchased Tivo. Ever since, it is the rare television show that I will watch live. Anyone who has ever owned a Tivo or DVR knows the luxury of being able to record your favorite television shows, and even live events, so that you can watch them whenever you want. And for those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, you might want to join the 21st century as soon as humanly possible by taking a trip to your local electronics store to pick up one of God’s gifts to couch potatoes.
One of the greatest features of Tivo and DVRs is their ability to allow viewers to skip over commercials either through fast forwarding through them, or jumping ahead 30 seconds. While consumers may be saving millions of hours by jumping past plugs for the latest laundry detergent or gas guzzling SUV, advertisers have been griping quite loudly about their commercials being “zapped” for some time now.
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Popularity: 10% [?]
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