“Puri film humne trailer mein hi dekh li (Saw the entire film in the trailer itself)” – this has become a recurring comment that flashes not just virtually but in a conversation between two laymen who have seen the respective footage of a film trailer and are casually conversing about it.
It all propelled from the advent and boost of the digital era where the trailer of a film began becoming more and more important than before you hit the theatre to watch a film – the doorway into the interest or curiosity of watching a film is the trailer. However, filmmakers and the technical team attached to the project have been known to get a tad too indulgent and in an attempt to gage in on the whistles and edge-of-the-seat moments in a trailer, they end up revealing too much thus hurting the film’s chances and curbing the eventual impact of it. But does it really matter and what is the alternative to it? With repeated case studies and the frequency of this occurrence being high, we try to analyze it.
The Editing Choices
No thumb rule attests itself to how long a trailer should be – you can have a two-minute, or a three-minute trailer and there is a possibility that the three-minute trailer might reveal less than the two-minute one, purely depending on the way it is cut and cumulated. And that’s where the crux of the matter lies – the editing. It is imperative to be especially meticulous in what is being shown in a trailer and how it is being shown. For instance, showcasing a pivotal moment in the film that might evoke a whistle or shock value is best left alone from the trailer – if it is indeed extremely important to somehow incorporate it, to be doing it slyly or in a frantic frame – would be ideal. But more often than not now, the makers succumb to the temptation of making a bigger impact than other trailers out there, and thus give away too much.
This became the conversation it did after the respective trailers of Singham Again and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 dropped in the last two weeks. When was the last time you had a trailer clocking an unthinkable 5 minutes? Singham Again’s trailer did not just clock an unprecedented five minutes but essentially gave away all the mega moments that you would have anticipated enjoying in the theatre. The entries, heroic swagger, slo-mo sequences and even having the biggest stars in one frame – everything was shown. Director Rohit Shetty is unapologetic about it and while that is commendable, for the first time, the reception to a trailer became primarily about showing way too much not leaving much room for imagination.
Parallelly, there was the trailer of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, which, while not clocking five minutes did run at a reasonably long 3 minutes, 51 seconds. To their credit, the overall impact of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’s trailer was significantly better than Singham Again purely based on getting you pumped and not showcasing literally everything. But even here, to be showcasing an extensive cut of Madhuri Dixit’s character presence dampened the impact to a certain extent.
It Isn’t Just About The Time
To be clear again, it isn’t always about the runtime of a trailer. One of the more perplexing choices was the trailer of Mr. & Mrs. Mahi recently. Despite clocking a little less than three minutes, which is a norm lately – what was bewildering was to see that almost every major development that the story of the Mahi couple was shown in the trailer itself. This diminishes a film like this even more that purely relies on its emotional core to form a connect and doesn’t have the quintessential hero moments that makes up for other factors. Another example of a similar occurrence was the trailer of Chandu Champion – which, owing to being a biopic went on to show a little too much and to add to that, there was a Trailer 2 as well.
Better Edit & Smarter Choices
The idea of choosing a trailer cut is always a blend of multiple things but the primary motive is clear – piquing the audience’s interest to the extent that they are compelled to see the film. A trailer should be dealt with the same treatment a movie is made with – meticulous choice of scenes that raise excitement but not showcasing important plot points. The other way is a more unconventional way to work with it thinking outside the box and raising a conversation more than just showing the film’s story.
An example of that would be the trailer of the 2019 film, Super Deluxe. A film about four stories and how they coincide with each other presented a trailer that literally showcased footage from all four stories but never with the actual dialogue in the film but with actor Vijay Sethupathi’s voiceover who tells the story of a man and a tiger. This worked wonders in not just the way the trailer was presented but also how the fable metaphorically represented what the four stories in the film would lead to smartly and effectively. Another example of a well-cut and impactful trailer was that of Gully Boy, who chose to let the music do the talking while also highlighting only the more important dialogues without giving the context away.
Trailers are the window for people to open and look into what is inside that house of a film but when you open the door instead of the window, you give too much access and what is supposed to tease you, ends up being indifferent.