SPOILER ALERT! Teasers, Trailers & Too Much Information

By Daniel Mumby / August 2, 2011

Humans are naturally curious creatures. When presented with the prospect of something new or unknown, we want to examine it to find out what it€™s all about. Film is no exception, with audiences and theorists feverishly devouring information about upcoming releases. The very act of watching a film is one of curiosity: Alfred Hitchcock spoke of audiences €œdipping their toe in the cold waters of fear€, while classics like Peeping Tom and Blue Velvet have characterised audiences as being profoundly voyeuristic. But recently this insatiable curiosity has taken a worrying turn. Anyone who has seen a recent trailer for any Hollywood production cannot have failed to notice that most give away almost of all the plot of the film they are meant to be selling. It has become common practice for studios to put out several trailers in succession, each revealing more and more about the plot and look of a given film. And in the internet age of leaks and teasers, it is possible to know enough about a film to comprehensively review it without ever actually seeing it. No-one is going to deny that the internet has its benefits; without it, you wouldn€™t be reading this article. But how has this culture of too much information come about? Has the current practice of leaks and teasers taken some of the surprise out of movie-going? And what are the wider consequences of this situation, with regard to audience mentality and the approach which studios take to future moviemaking?

We€™re better, connected?

So, first of all, how did we get here? It€™s really two questions: what has changed in the way that moviegoers behave, and what has changed in the film industry. It€™s a complex issue, but for the purpose of a general overview we can boil it down to three things: the connecting role of the internet, the increasing role of demographics, and the (alleged) infantilisation of audiences. The internet in general and social networking in particular has changed the way that people interact. From a business point of view, it means that the relationship between buyer and seller is no longer passive: we no longer have to accept what we are given on the grounds that we don€™t know better. In the past if you didn€™t like a film, the most you could do was ask for your money back. Now you can post about it on Facebook, make video reviews on YouTube, or circulate angry tweets to your friends. These posts and tweets can then be re-posted and re-tweeted until, under the right circumstances, virtual word-of-mouth can affect a film€™s box office. One of the first and best examples of this was Batman and Robin, frequently voted as the worst film of all time by fanboys (for the record, Titanic: The Animated Musical is far, far worse). When it opened worldwide on June 20th 1997, its opening weekend grosses were encouraging €“ at $42.8m in North America alone, it was the third-highest debut of the year. But in the second week, its takings plunged 63%, and the rest €“ like Joel Schumacher €“ is history. The reason? Websites like Ain€™t It Cool News and Dark Horizons, on which ordinary members of the public could write reviews urging their friends and families to stay away. With the growth of Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes, and the rise of personal blogging, this trend has become increasingly sophisticated and accepted. Additionally, it is more straightforward in the internet age to get close to the process of filmmaking. Assuming that Six Degrees of Separation/ Kevin Bacon works, you€™ll know someone who either works in film or who knows someone who works in film. With those kinds of contacts, there€™s no limit to what an enthusiastic novice can learn, whether from getting tickets to preview screenings or €“ less legally €“ coming into possession of unfinished footage. Even if you don€™t know anyone of this description, it isn€™t hard to gain access to insider information. Survey websites like Choozz.co.uk frequently offer paid surveys where individuals can watch unfinished clips or trailers from films not due out for years, and then answer questions about their attitudes towards the given product. In the last 20 years studios have made various attempts to get audiences involved in the development of a film. Horror films such as Paranormal Activity and Drag Me To Hell will often have their premieres filmed, with the audiences€™ reactions being used both to judge whether the film works and to sell it via the trailers. And there are dozens of stories about test screenings, and of directors fighting against reactions which were taken as gospel truth by the studio. The bad reaction to test screenings of Twelve Monkeys meant we almost never got to see one of Terry Gilliam€™s best films. Demographic profiling may be nothing new, but the internet has enabled studios to use it and apply it more intensely and effectively. More than ever before, studios are interested in making films which appeal to a specific fan base. The present wave of comic book adaptations came about as much from fan pressure as from the inherent appeal and marketability of the characters. Studios increasingly understand the potential of fans for drumming up publicity for a film, and so are keen to reward their loyalty with a sneak preview of, say, the latest new cast member of The Hobbit. Of course, one could be cynical and say that studios only do this to safeguard against a wave of bad publicity. But surely the best safeguard would be to say or do nothing? Then we have the most contentious point, namely the alleged infantilisation of audiences. It€™s almost impossible to talk about this without sounding either immensely arrogant or a miserable old fart, but the dramatic changes in movie-going since Jaws and Star Wars are still rippling through our culture. If you want a comprehensive account of what happened, go and read either Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind or Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate by Stephen Bach. Both are definitive guides to the fall of New Hollywood, which for many signalled the end of intelligent American filmmaking. Put simply, Jaws and Star Wars were refreshingly straightforward and populist at a time when New Hollywood was increasingly esoteric and self-absorbed. The success of these films began a change in the mentality of movie bosses, who pointed to their huge grosses as a reason to keep things simple. By the mid-1980s this had mutated into the high concept work of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer: films which you could sum up in 25 words or less, and which were made for the sole purpose of making money. This and an increasing tolerance of product placement have driven the majority of mainstream moviemaking into satisfying a lowest common denominator. Audiences are characterised as impatient and incapable of independent thought, and this is reflected not only in the content of films but the way in which they are advertised.

Hype, Deceive and Dumb Down

By a combination of internet accessibility, obsessive demography and dumbing down, we have arrived at our current state of affairs. Some of it is irreversible €“ like I said earlier, none of us would wish to turn off the internet just to stop the latest releases being spoiled. But there are a number of worrying consequences for the present generation of filmgoers, which will only be exacerbated unless things change. Three main problems can be identified. Firstly, there is the problem of hype. We can all think of recent examples of films which have been hyped to the gills only to turn out to be either terrible or disappointingly average: Spider-Man 3, the Star Wars prequels, all the Transformers movies €“ the list goes on and on. The constant drip-drip-drip of information, through leaks, trailers and panels at events like Comic Con, builds such a sense of momentum that unless you have something up there with Inception on your hands, you€™re bound to be disappointed. The more often such disappointments occur, the more that younger viewers will be turned off by cinema, and regardless of the film in question that€™s never a good thing. Secondly, and relatedly, there is the problem of deception. When The Road was released in 2009, there were complaints that the trailer misrepresented the film in such a way that its box office suffered due to audience disappointment. The Road itself is a slow-burning, bleak and melancholic father-son journey to the East coast of America following an apocalypse; the trailer for The Road looks like an outtake from Mad Max or the later Rambo films. Because studios have a very specific idea of what the people want (or what they think the people want) they will sell a film in whatever way is necessary in order to hit their demographic targets. If an audience is deceived, tough €“ they€™ve already paid, therefore the studio€™s side of the bargain has been fulfilled. Finally, this whole situation feeds the vicious circle of potential infantilisation. The constant expectation of information from a given source means that there is less incentive for punters to actively search for films €“ smaller films, smarter films, films in different languages, films which are not mainstream multiplex fare. There is less incentive, in other words, for people to actually do and think things for themselves. Think about it: when was the last time you were actually surprised by a film, or discovered a hidden gem from the last ten years? It€™s not as easy as you€™d think. All that is for certain is that the current trend in trailers, teasers and leaked footage has several serious consequences for mainstream blockbusters and for cinema as a whole. There is no one way to combat or mitigate it, no magic bullet which can change the industry in one summer. All we can do is to encourage the filmmakers who offer something new, intelligent or different, and to be eternally vigilant about our personal prejudices. For those who were expecting easy answers €“ there are none. Sorry to disappoint.