Five Hollywood Tricks To Make Good Trailers and Bad Movies

The movie studios don’t just want to create high quality products to entertain us. They also want to take out our corneas, put their knees on our throats and drop hot cinema directly into our eyes. Even though we scratch, squirm and yell, they are too strong. They leave us broken, blind and wandering around the same way that Denzel Washington did in Book of Eli. That movie is an excellent example, since it was not nearly as good as promised in the trailers.

The trailers are not only bad for the audiences, they are also bad for the actual movies. This article presents five ways in which these trailer ad campaigns can actually be bad for the movies that they are advertising.

5

The Techniques Used for Marketing Encourage Poor Movies

Horror movie fans are aware of how few good horror movies there are. It is also very difficult for these movies to get adequate publicity. Although there are rare excellent movies like It Follows (which due to its quality succeeds by word-of-mouth), there are even more mediocre movies such as Ouija, Last Exorcism or Devil's Due. Why does this happen? Why is it that the movie industry continues to finance such obviously inferior horror movies?

The reason that they do this is because these movies have minimal budgets compared to major blockbusters. However, they were very successful. For example, Ouija cost $5 million to make and earned over $90 million, while Last Exorcism had a budget of $1.8 million and earned a total of $67 million.

"Viral marketing" is currently very popular but it isn’t related to the actual movie. Ouija marketing had very elaborate marketing that had pranks pulled by a fake psychic. These trailers were actually much more entertaining than the actual movie. Although I saw Ouija, I am not proud of it.

What is the reason for the success of these films? They are successful because even though they are obviously inferior horror movies with very small production budgets, they have marketing budgets that are almost equal to those of major blockbusters. The studios have utilized the clickbait approach to film marketing. This involves focusing their effort in getting rears into seats without caring about what the audience is watching. When these marketing specialists learn that the entertaining and successful movie, It Follows, does well because of the excellent word of mouth, they search for the “trick” to its success. They are convinced that there is a secret to the success of such an inexpensive film.

Its success must just be a mystery.

4

Everything is Ruined by the Use of "Marketing Tracking”

The current way in which a movie’s earnings are calculated are both wrong and stupid. As a result, it prevents good movies from being made. I will provide my explanation below.

The main determinant of whether a movie will do well, isn’t its total actual earnings but its anticipated earnings that are based on the success of the marketing. The totals are always very inaccurate. For example, The Expendables 3 was expected to earn $20 million but actually only made $15.8 million. Guardians of the Galaxy was supposed to open at $70 million, but actually made a total of $94.3 million. A third example is Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. This movie was projected to earn $19 million, but only made a little more than $6 million.

Although these projections seem to close to what the films actually earned, they are used to determine whether a film is considered to be a success. An example is the film The Wolverine which was projected to open at $65 million. However, the movie only had box office receipts of $53 million and was, therefore, considered to be a flop. However, it actually earned a total of $414 million. This is the third highest gross receipts for any X-Men movie. The only reason that it was considered to be unsuccessful is because of the inaccurate marketing projections for the film. As a result, they almost didn’t make a Pacific Rim sequel.

Pacific Rim was, therefore, not expected to succeed even before it was released. The initial negative headlines had a major impact on the word of mouth for the film. The movies actually made an impressive profit. However, it took the studios a long time to acknowledge the success of the film. This is reflective of the misplaced focus of the major studios’ marketing efforts.

3

Why are Films Marketed the Same Way Despite Any Logical Reasoning?

Most of us are responsible adults who successfully take care of our work and family responsibilities and enjoy our remaining leisure time. As a result, we may have not had to time to notice movie marketing efforts for many films. It is, therefore, easy to understand why we have failed to notice that all Marvel movie posters are identical.

These posters all have a number of common characteristics. All of the characters in the posters are standing in front of evil flying things, they are all very grumpy and they are all looking to the side of the camera. With the exception of Iron Man, they are all surrounded by their friends. This is because Iron Man is flanked by everyone in the two Avengers posters. As a result, it all balances out. This situation is strange because it appeared that in the first group of Marvel movies, there was greater diversity.

The reason for the change is that Avengers was so successful that it redefined box office performance. As a result, Marvel copied the style for their other films. The real reason for the success of the Avengers was that it was a mixture of several different films. All of those films had their own individual styles. As a result, Marvel now makes sure that all of their movies have at least one common feature with The Avengers.

One of the common features of film marketing by major studios is that it copies what has been successful in the past without giving any consideration of the reasons why it has succeeded. This is the reason which all films have character posters:

It is very hard to understand why they do this. Some of the characters that appear in the posters barely appear in the movies. One of the characters that is shown is clearly drunk and others don’t make sense including in the posters.

The reason that these character posters are used is because they are cheap and easy to use. A designer can come up with the idea for a poster like this in their sleep since it is so easy to do (Nick Nolte wasn’t even aware that his picture was being taken). There is no cost to print these posters, since they can just be placed online and will meet your needs.

Although Guardians of the Galaxy a comedy and The Hobbit is an actual cartoon, the posters are actually very dark. This is done because a number of movies have had success with dark marketing. Other movies emulate this success by including bats in dark caves at night.

Do you understand what I am telling you?

Those people who are working in movie marketing are like fish. They will try to bite anything that is shiny, even if it has a big hook hanging out of it.

2

Opening Weekends are the Focus of Movie Studios (Even if They Don’t Matter)

In addition to the movie industry’s overriding concern with the tracking of marketing, they are extremely interested in a movie’s opening weekend. They consider that ticket sales on opening weekend are very important and it is what they always focus on. However, opening weekends are actually relatively meaningless in terms of the profit potential for a movie.

The majority of film studios are owned by large corporations. The profits that those movies can make (even the largest blockbusters) are relatively insignificant. They are actually more interested in the prestige that results from a successful movie. The studio executives in their high-rise towers love being included in “Top 10 and Top 100” lists. If a movie is able to attract this type of prestige, it can actually be more beneficial to the studio than the actual success of the movie.

Gotta get that coveted "waiting in line at the grocery store" demo.

This obsessive focus with opening weekend performance, ensures that word-of-mouth (which involves people liking, caring and talking about the movie) has become virtually meaningless. Therefore, the primary concerns of the studios is to saturate the television and other media with ads to ensure the best possible performance on opening weekend.

1

Movie Music Is Very Important (Although the Studios Don’t Recognize It)

Having effective music is a very important part of filmmaking. However, in general, it is not truly appreciated. Although you usually don’t notice if a movie score is poor, it is true that every classic movie has a truly iconic score such as in the following movies: Psycho, Jaws, Star Wars and Pacific Rim.

Since music is so important to the effectiveness of the movie, it is natural to think that it would be an important component of a movie trailer in order to provide excitement for the audience. However, that is not how the major movie studios make trailers. The trailers that they produce not only do not spend much money on sound, they actually use scores that have been successful in the past and are associated with other movies. As a result, the sound that is used, is often not appropriate for the particular movie that is being promoted.

The theme from the ending of Alien has been a part of every movie trailer that has been made. This even includes movies that were made before Aliens. This theme has been used in From Dusk Till Dawn, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Minority Report. This has been done even though it has no particular relationship to the movie that it is being promoted.

This can be averted with licensing, such as when Clash of the Titans incorporated The Used's "The Bird and the Worm" in its trailer, which was very effective.

However, licensing is very expensive and involves considerable complex paperwork (as well as phone calls and emails). It is not worth the effort that is required.

My main point is that the major studios are materialistic morons who are totally unartistic. As a result, they will do everything possible to maximize their profits at the expense of removing all forms of art from the industry. They must burn.

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