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Trailer Clarification

What I Know: Beyond my own experience, I know that surprisingly (to me) little work has been done on movie trailers in an academic setting. There is no record of any published academic article that addresses the topic at any great length, and film studies seems content to focus almost exclusively on films themselves rather than their marketing in the forms of trailers.

However, I also know after research that one book has been published on trailers: Coming Attractions by Lisa Kernan. Kernan addresses the trailer question both anatomically (the substance of a trailer) and rhetorically (she focuses on the question, “Who are these trailers talking to?”). Her book confirms that there is little published academic work on trailers, and that the work that has appeared tends to be popular in nature, such as editorials in newspapers and such, so her book is pretty much the first, the last, the everything on trailers.

How I Feel: When I found out that Kernan’s book deals with the question rhetorically, I almost panicked. She seems better versed in film, more rhetorically savvy, and to have hogged the field: how can I even do a project on trailers for David Blakesley’s Visual Rhetoric class when the book cites The Terministic Screen as its guide in looking at films rhetorically? What is left for me to do?

After I calmed down, I realized that there is probably still much trailer work to be done. Though she treats trailers rhetorically, her emphasis on marketing and invoked audience is not my interest. My interest remains similar to Walker Percy’s: how does the trailer change the audience’s expectation and therefore experience of a film? What is the nature of our anticipation of a film after watching a trailer, and how do different trailer formats affect that anticipation?

These questions are still big, I am convinced that using Percy as a starting point and looking at his construction of expectation in light of other rhetorical theorists should help the project bear fruit. Further, since Kernan has established the sort of FAQ on trailers, my project will gain focus from her orienting discussion.

Submitted by magnoliafan on Thu, 2007-02-08 07:27.
magnoliafan's blog

Don't Let Blakesley Stop You!
David Blakesley's picture
Submitted by David Blakesley on Thu, 2007-03-01 09:56.

Lars:

You have some great suggestions already. And (for sure), don't let this stop you!

"How I Feel: When I found out that Kernan’s book deals with the question rhetorically, I almost panicked. She seems better versed in film, more rhetorically savvy, and to have hogged the field: how can I even do a project on trailers for David Blakesley’s Visual Rhetoric class when the book cites The Terministic Screen as its guide in looking at films rhetorically? What is left for me to do?"

Instead, take advantage and extend. Starting with expectations/desire is a good way to begin. One source for you could be Burke's discussion of form in Counter-Statement's "Lexicon Rhetoricae." (A great read, that section.) He discusses form as the "arousal and fulfillment of desire," a definition that should suit your purposes nicely. That Blakesley guy mentions "Film as form" in the The Terministic Screen book, so maybe that will be generative (not arrestive), too.


What about extra-trailer expectations
Adryan's picture
Submitted by Adryan on Tue, 2007-02-13 12:21.

I think that part of your inquiry is going to have to acknowledge the fact that most movies are pretty damned predictable, trailer or not. In addition to trailers, there is a whole apparatus of tropes, genres, archetypes and the such out there that manipulate our expectations of a film. There's the classical Hollywood four-part structure that can still be superimposed on most films. There's the assumption of justice versus the "dark comedy" or "post-modern" expectation that our expectations will be frustrated. Do trailers compliment, antagonize or modify these expectations?


Lars
Ryan's picture
Submitted by Ryan on Thu, 2007-02-08 10:57.

I think your focus on how expectations set by trailers shapes audience experience is a fantastic idea. I have long noticed that my enjoyment of a film is as much based on expectation as anything else, though I think this is long ignored because expectation isn't any kind of classifiable aesthetic criteria, unless it is a mass social expectation (everyone expected a better Star Wars prequel, for example). So this project sounds great - good luck.


I dig it
mark p's picture
Submitted by mark p on Thu, 2007-02-08 10:50.

I'm looking forward to following this project, Mr. Lars, it's got that whole academicized approach to pop culture that i do enjoy. I'm wondering if the practice of purposefully avoiding trailers and spoliers, paired with the almost inability to do so in today's media culture, could be part of your paper? I'd be personally interested in (and therefore you should do it) in how spoilers play into this-- both people avoiding and purposefully searching them out.

-- the moustache


Aberrant
magnoliafan's picture
Submitted by magnoliafan on Tue, 2007-02-13 11:10.

That's a good call- I'm leaning into exploring mainly aberrant trailers that don't fit the normal mold. When there's a trailer that is all footage not featured in the movie, or a trailer that makes one think that the movie is something that it's not, how does that confound our expectations? Is that a separate experience?

L-Train