Trailers... 

This is just a few words on one of my favourite aspects of visiting the cinema - watching the trailers. I can happily sit through just about any trailer that's played in front of me, even for films I've absolutely no intention of seeing.

I guess for those films I know I'm gonna hate, all of the most exciting bits are already included saving me the bother of actually seeing the film. And of course, for those films I'm desperate to see, well I do have a tendency to try and construct the entire film around the snippets I've seen. Oh yes, there's many a movie experience I've had marred when, during the main feature, my mind has kept wandering back to the trailers seen earlier.

So what trailers stick in the mind then? Well, I surprised myself no end back in 1992. I've no idea what film I'd gone to see although I know I was frequenting the flea pits around Forest Gate at that time. I seem to recall the trailer starting with an aerial shot zooming in on a designer-suit clad guy standing on top of a push high-rise complex against a perfect blue sky. A few random shots followed of him trying to deal with a very demanding diva, followed by various celebrity behaviour and goings-on, a security scare at a club, said diva emerging from a limo to greet her adoring fans. Then, the money shot. The sound dies, the screen fades to black and..... Boom! suddenly the action starts up again now accompanied by the powerful post-bridge chorus of Miss Houston's 'I will always love you'. You know the bit, when the song goes silent.

I admit, I've always been swept up when it comes to music in films. Anyway, that was it. I wasn't satisfied until I'd seen The Bodyguard. Whether I enjoyed it or not is almost irrelevant. The trailer had done it's job, quite successfully. As it is, I give the film 5 out of 10 (and the trailer 10 out of 10).

Another trailer that sticks in my mind is the one for Francis Ford Coppola's take on Dracula. The film is so visually stunning I bet the trailer editors were pulling their hair out over which bits they had to leave out. Anyway, it was the music again that got to me. Those dark brooding chords laid over lines like "I've crossed oceans of time to find you". Oddly enough, the music featured in the trailer didn't make it into the final product. Something that happens all too often when the studios want to get the trailers for their as-yet-unfinished masterpieces to play along with the most appropriate films.

And I can't stop without mentioning that most frustrating of phenomenon, the 'teaser' trailer. The top spot here for me must go to Independence Day. Here, they kept it simple yet effective. A few shots of panicked faces through car windshields followed by the sight of a huge wall of flame thundering towards the camera, the flames dying to reveal the words July 4th, then Independence Day. Pure genius.

Mind you, I'm sure I could come up with something equally effective if I had an editing machine at home. For now though, I'll leave it to those Hollywood 'types'. "Be quiet. The trailers have started!"

The One That Got Away... 

Apocalypse Now.

The best cinematography I have ever seen.

Criminal then, that I missed it at the cinema.