English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

This should be a fun and intereting topic to develop further.

One way to begin digging deeper would be to find trailer spoofs, trailers that parody trailers. One great one is in Last Action Hero. There's a trailer for the new Arnold movie (Hamlet). "There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet's taking out the trash!"

Hitchcock liked to spoof the trailer genre also. One particularly good one is the trailer for Psycho. You can find it on the DVD version (which I have if you need it).

Onward!

Dave

The art of the trailer is to sell as many tickets to a movie as possible in a short amount of time. About ten years ago, there was some sort of outrage becaues trailers were giving away endings and sometimes, even the commercially endorsed ones were misleading as to the naure of the film. So in fairly recent years, a great deal more energy within the industry has been devoted to making trailers that enhance the film viewing rather than merely sell the product. The trivia to know is that trailers are made, not by the director, but by an independent trailer making firm. So maybe the inquiry should be geared towards interrogating the rhetoric of sales pitches for these firms:

http://www.la411.com/Ad_Agencies_Production_Companies/Trailer_Production...

Or, Ryan could have a more informed opinion . . .

Lars, there was a great article about movie trailers in the last issue of Premiere magazine. The author was complaining about how movie trailers give too much away, and interview several filmmakers and studio heads to discuss the process of making a trailer, including the extensive focus group testing that goes into the process. It was in the December issue, and it should be pretty interesting for you to check out. I like the topic.

Could you please address trailers that feel the need to give away key points of the movie! Beyond frustrating, I wonder if there is a rhetorical reason for doing so and if it happens more times with certain kind of movies.

Another interesting trend is the one scene trailer. Instead of quick cuts from various parts of the film, the trailer consists of one scene. Both "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" have done this recently. Why this trend? Does it work? For the love of buddah, what does it mean!!!

It might of interest that goof balls online often re-cut trailers to change the "content" of movies: Sleepless in Seatle becomes a thriller and The Shining becomes a romantic comedy.