*Less is more-and least can be most. Aspect Ratio's Bob Israel first came upon this wisdom in 1981 while making a trailer for the gory thriller Graduation Day. "We shot most of it in total blackness," he says. "Very impressionistic." Then came his 1991 Addams Family trailer, a minimalist classic composed of the famous finger-snapping musical theme and a girl's scream. In Israel's Toys teaser, Robin Williams riffed in a wheat field, generating hearty laughs from audiences. Trouble began only when a more detailed trailer reached theaters. "The more people learned," Israel recalls, "the less interested they were in seeing the film."
*Score With The Music. Since soundtracks are seldom ready when trailers go public, trailer makers use whatever works, even music from other movies. Well- worn favorites include the music from Tootsie and Terms of Endearment, and recently Wojciech Kilar's score for Bram Stoker's Dracula and Enya's eerie New | Age pop keep popping up. For his Dennis the Menace teaser, in which a marble from Dennis' slingshot ricochets in a dozen directions, Intralink's Goldschmidt hired a composer to score the specially shot footage. "The music gave a cartoony feel to the live action," he says. Aspect Ratio's Israel used the bouncy grunge of Urge Overkill's "Sister Havana" in Fatal Instinct's trailer: "We wanted to say to young audiences, 'This is a movie you'll relate to.'"
*Get a whole lotta love. All's fair in love and trailers. Richard Gere steals kisses from Lena Olin, gets slapped, and sends Olin to the showers to cool down in the trailer for Mr. Jones, but don't expect any more steam than that in the movie. Virtually every frame of passion in The Age of Innocence also appeared in its trailer, yet that still wasn't enough. For an Age TV spot, Columbia marketing exec Marc Shmuger commissioned a seductive techno-pop score to make the period piece more appealing to twentysomethings. "The bottom line is it's an unconsummated love affair," he says. "We felt it was critical to bring up the heat." *Cut to the chase. Who needs a story line when you've got killer visuals? The dialogue-free Cliffhanger trailer had audiences gasping at the flashy montage of Alpine action, and in particular at the final shot, which showed Sly Stallone suspended in midair in an outrageous leap between icy peaks. But those who looked for the moment in the movie are still dangling. Deemed too unrealistic, the scene was cut from the final version.
*Never say die. How do you promote a movie about death? Go into deep denial. "Death is a turnoff to moviegoers," says Columbia's Shmuger, who spent a month revising the trailer for My Life-in which Michael Keaton plays a father- to-be in a race with cancer-before settling on a version that ends with a man's hand holding a baby's. "We wanted the trailer to convey a spiritual quality," he says.
*Test, test, test. Like movies, trailers have trial runs before audiences, then go back to their makers for repeated revision-or overhaul-if the response is not up to par. But maybe studios shouldn't kill themselves. Even a great trailer can't save a clunker. Before they ever saw 1986's Howard the Duck, moviegoers laughed till they quacked for Lea Thompson's parody of Brooke Shields' Calvin Klein jeans ad: "I wish I could run my fingers through his feathers." But the decoy didn't help. "Sometimes," says Israel, "the truth just shines through." *
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