How do Movie Theaters decide which Trailers to show? (By stereotyping their audiences)

Before seeing Clash of the Titans in 3-D, filmgoers at AMC theaters must sit through previews for the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, Salt, and Step Up 3-D, among others. These films have little in common and seem intended for vastly different audiences. How do movie theaters decide which trailers to show?

The "quadrant" system. As many as six trailers play before features at major chains, like AMC and Regal. The studio releasing a given film typically has automatic rights to two of these slots, and theater executives (in consultation with higher-ups from various studios) select the remaining four. Though theoretically studios and theaters could attach any trailer to any movie, they usually decide which releases to promote by using the "quadrant" system, which divides potential audiences into four different categories: men under 25, women under 25, men over 25, and women over 25. Before chick flicks, theaters play previews for romantic dramas as well as romantic comedies, because they figure that's what young women will eventually want to see. Regal Cinemas also began matching red band trailers, which include profanity and sexually explicit scenes, with R, NC-17, and unrated movies in 2008. And sometimes theaters disregard quadrants altogether if something else ties the movies together—say, if they're all in 3-D. (It's impossible to show a 3-D trailer before a 2-D movie, since those audiences aren't wearing special glasses.)

Of course, since there are often more than four possible previews available in a given quadrant, negotiating which trailers make the cut can be tricky. The young men going to see Clash of the Titans might enjoy learning about any number of upcoming movies—Kick-Ass, The Losers, Iron Man 2—in addition to the films already being advertised before the feature. Theaters further narrow the field by trying to treat all major studios more or less equally. They might play Warner Bros. trailers on 20 percent of all screens and Disney trailers on 30 percent, for example. The same trailers don't always play before the same movie at every branch of a large chain, so it's possible to spread the wealth around.

Sometimes distributors don't want to settle for equal treatment. Every studio wants its own films to piggyback on surefire hits, regardless of quadrants. As TiVo, the cable renaissance, and the Internet have eaten away at television audiences, theatrical trailers have become more and more important as marketing tools. Moviegoers are a captive audience, after all—and studios will do whatever they can to take advantage. Though such behavior is frowned upon, executives have on occasion paid exorbitant amounts to ensure that their trailers will be well-placed, as when Sony's Jeff Blake gave a theater chain $100,000 to ensure that the trailer for The Animal, a Rob Schneider vehicle, would be shown before Universal's The Mummy Returns in 2002.

The trailer placement system at independent theaters is much simpler: They only show trailers for movies that will soon be playing on one of their screens. For these exhibitors, the calendar is the only factor at play—and sometimes, their coming attractions don't even have trailers, which simplifies things even further.

Do books really need Hollywood-style trailers?

This month brings the publication of Eating Animals—a vegetarian's memoir and manifesto, a Peter Singer sort of guide to a Michael Pollan world, the third book by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. In support of it, the author and his publisher have concocted a short Web video. When I watched it over dinner last night, it put me off my lamb shoulder chop (medium rare) only in its unpalatable tone, which is extremely cute and incredibly twee. It's but the latest reflection of the ways that such clips—"book trailers"—can reveal the hopes and fantasies of readers, writers, and publishers alike.

For an establishing shot, Foer offers his audience a Google Map pinpointing the corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifth Street in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., and—with too minor a garnish of sarcasm—defining his neighborhood by way of a photo of a fancy baby stroller. The three minutes that follow comport with the borough's hard-earned reputation as a roost for self-satisfied, quince-eating Bobos.

The author pretends—"Oh, hello"—that the camera has snuck up on him in his capacious study and proceeds to describe the book's inspirations and intentions. In bold graphics appropriate to the opening credits of a Guy Ritchie film, he acquaints us with his son, his dog, and his grandmother, who at one point asks whether he would like a nice piece of fruit. "At the end of the day, it's a family story," Foer says, using a cliché that no one of his intelligence should ever use outside a Hollywood pitch meeting. In conclusion, the clip presents a series of outtakes, the last of which—"the Hebrew one"—finds him saying shalom to the bubbies in the book-buying audience. Personality upstages purpose. What matters here is not the moral seriousness of Eating Animals but that its author has turned us a cheek to be pinched.

A company called Circle of Seven, which produces videos for an impressive array of trash, trademarked the term book trailer in 2002, but the phrase has caught on broadly, and there will be no turning back. A consideration of the form might begin, and even end, by dwelling on the word trailer itself, conventionally used to indicate a montage that, running in a movie theater before a feature, gives away too much of the plot of a film not yet released. No one would think to call an ad for a TV show a trailer; it is a promo or a spot or maybe a teaser. In embracing the term, the publishing industry helps itself to some Hollywood glamour. And in avoiding the most obviously appropriate word for these commercials—that is, commercials—sacrosanct literature keeps grubby commerce at an arm's length. The book trailers that feel most properly trailer-ish promote genre novels with all appropriate lurid color, whooshing noise, and bold strokes. See, for instance, the clip for Stephen King's new Under the Dome—apparently about a Maine town trapped under one of those thingies that goes atop a footed cake plate—or, a YouTube favorite, the tongue-in-cheek, tentacle-around-suitor ad for the Jane Austen-spoofing Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Where the King trailer sells mass-market sensation with bold strokes, more "literary" endeavors tend to make a fetish of their independent sensibilities or to appeal to the viewer's admiration of his own intellectual gravity. In the first category, we must place the doggedly whimsical trailer for I Was Told There'd Be Cake, Sloane Crosley's rather charming essay collection, a clip that at least conveys something of the book's tone. Perhaps we can agree that it has a cousin in the promo for No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July's sporadically readable short-story collection, a clip that plays like propaganda against quirkiness.

At least the July promos has something like a sense of fun. You would not get the idea that Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project is, in fact, a good book after watching the trailer for it, largely because you would not be awake. Black borders; flat, ghostly score; disconnected excerpts presented in a somberly serifed typeface. Rarely does a sentence with a semicolon in it belong in a video clip. But the reader's self-image as a serious person is duly flattered.

I'd much rather that publishers play to my anxieties the old fashioned way, by selling sex. This series of Penguin Classics ads takes an ironic approach in suggesting that a close familiarity with Jane Austen will help you get laid—ironic but not really kidding. Please note how the tattooed shelf-browser featured at the 0:15 mark of the introduction fits into her skirt. And mark the narrator's claim that "social situations [are] excellent opportunities during which you can express the parallels that exist between great works of literature and everyday life." This is not perhaps what Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren had in mind when devising their Great Books list, but Roger Sterling and Bert Cooper would approve.

The De-Gaying of “A Single Man”

While the heterosexualized poster for Tom Ford’s not-so-heterosexual “A Single Man” caused a wee stir last week, it seems the recently released trailer has just re-enforced those complaints.

A comparative study of the trailer that Tom Ford’s production company released as the film premiered in Venice and Toronto and the trailer The Weinstein Company just put out tells quite the tale. The new trailer uses the same music and mostly the same shots, except it adds in a bunch of quotes that not-so-subtly emphasize the film’s Oscar buzz, leaving out a few choice shots - pretty much all of which are suggestive of the film’s gay content.

The new trailer essentially is altered to suggest the core of the film is the relationship between Colin Firth and Julianne Moore’s characters, even removing from the end of the trailer the names of both Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult (who play Firth’s love interests). Moreover, in the first trailer, we see Firth’s character kiss both Goode and Moore, in the second we just get Moore. There’s also a sequence of shots in the first trailer which crosscuts Firth, who plays a professor in the film, staring into the eyes of both a female student and a male student. In the second, as you might guess, we only get the female (in a telling twist, instead of cutting to the male eyes, the trailer cuts to a quote from Entertainment Weekly saying “[Firth’s] performance is bound to win attention in this year’s Oscar race”).

Gone completely in the new trailer are a few shots of Firth running into the smoking (literally and figuratively) male prostitute outside a liquor store (one of the film’s more homoerotic sequences), as well as a few shots of him and Hoult running romantically and shirtlessly into the ocean together.

In with the Oscar buzz, out with the gayness. It seems The Weinstein Company doesn’t want to take any chances with all those homophobic Academy members. Call it the “Brokeback Mountain” approach (and remember how well that worked out).

"Mammoth" Does IFC know how to market this film?

Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson is known for vulgar provocations like "A Hole in My Heart" and the spiritually-aware sex-trafficking odyssey "Lilya-4-Ever," so the director's latest, "Mammoth," is something of a departure. Trading in the lion's share of his frequently bunk sensationalism for quiet introspection, Moodysson comes up with one of the most agreeable, and unexpectedly poignant, globetrotting mosaics thus far — and there have been quite a few (anyone remember the dead-on-arrival "Rendition"?).

Though similar in many ways to Alejandro Gonzàlez Iñarritu's "Babel"— even sharing actor Gael Garcia Bernal — the scaled down "Mammoth" is (at least I think) a more satisfying film because it's not trying to eat you alive with its self-importance, and, at least until the the last act, which is a tad overwrought and melodramatic, the focus is placed more on people than big, we-are-the-world statements and tragedies that bring people together.

This domestic trailer for the film just doesn't capture that. One of "Mammoth's" real strengths is its understatement, evidenced the social realism of its performances; the identifiable duress of the film's overworked mom — a spiritual cousin of Catherine Keener's stressed parent in "Where the Wild Things Are" — magnificently played by Michelle Williams; and the earnest but a little naive husband (Bernal), who runs a popular gaming website and who, at the outset of the film, travels to Thailand with his sleazy lawyer to sign a multimillion dollar contract.

This trailer more of less reduce the movie to a series of generic titles ("their family seemed perfect," "perfection is not what it seems") and dramatic moments, of which in reality there are very few. "Mammoth" is made to look like a kinetic piece of filmmaking here, rife with sex and action, but people looking for that from Moodysson's film will likely be as disappointed as the booing audience at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.

"Mammoth" is set for a limited release from IFC, opening November 20th.

Also, for a better representation of the film, along with a glimpse of its most frustratingly leaden globalism metaphor (a young girl's frequent trips to the planetarium), be sure to check out "Mammoth's" original, international trailer.  - Source: The Playlist

In a world of trailers, unseen Stars

It's been almost eight months since the death of Don LaFontaine, and everyone who’s anyone in his business — the business of announcing movie trailers — says there will never be another Thunder Throat.

Often called “the voice of God,” Mr. LaFontaine recorded voice-overs for more than 5,000 movie trailers and, during a period in the 1990s, had an almost absolute monopoly on network television promotional spots. In the years before his death at 68, he enjoyed a kind of celebrity status, appearing on “Today” and spoofing himself in a popular commercial for Geico. He looked like a bald pirate, and his distinctive face and noise-canceling baritone made him the embodiment of a business whose stars were all previously unseen.

“We lost our alpha dog,” said Marice Tobias, a consultant who coaches many A-list talents in voice-overs. “Don was the focal point for us, and there’s a void now.”

It would be a tad too facile to say that Hal Douglas, an 84-year-old titan in the trailer world, has stepped into Mr. LaFontaine’s shoes. Mr. Douglas has no nicknames. If his voice sounds anything like God’s, it’s God on Day 7: world-weary and slightly amused. He has an agent in New York, but she’s never visited his horse ranch here in the hills of Northern Virginia, where Mr. Douglas makes recordings in a simple studio, sometimes in pajamas. He says he doesn’t want to be compared to Mr. LaFontaine, but for the people who make movie trailers and watch them closely the comparison is unavoidable.

“Hal was the only guy that in some way, shape or form could be mentioned in the same breath as Don,” said Jeff Keels, a Texas television producer who is filming a documentary about Mr. LaFontaine and others called “The Voice Gods of Hollywood.” “But there’s a difference between Don and Hal. When Don said, ‘In a world ...,’ it sounded like a spot. It grabbed you. But when Hal says it, it transports you.”

Mr. Douglas says he can’t keep track of what trailers he recorded yesterday, much less over the almost 60 years he’s been behind a mike. He did “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump,” “Men in Black” and “Coneheads,” “Stranger Than Fiction” and “Marley and Me.” He recorded a voice-over for the Broadway play “Equus,” narrated programs on the History Channel (in the days before “Ice Road Truckers”), and served as the voice of the WB network.

“The fact is, my voice has been out there,” he said. “And it hangs out there. You sit down in the theater and sometimes in three out of four trailers I’d be on them.”

Mr. Douglas was born in 1924 in Stamford, Conn., the son of immigrants from Latvia and Russia. He spent three years in the Navy during World War II and wrote fiction in his free time. After the war he enrolled on the G.I. Bill at the University of Miami, where, he said, “I chased pretty girls into the drama department.” Acting became a passion; but passions, he said, don’t always pay the rent, especially in New York City. And so he went into radio and trained as an announcer, which later led to voice-over work.

“I’m not outstanding in any way,” he said. “It’s a craft that you learn, like making a good pair of shoes. And I just consider myself a good shoemaker.”

For a shoemaker Mr. Douglas is paid quite handsomely. He won’t quote figures, but he stands at the apex of a group of 15 to 20 voice actors whom Hollywood has deemed trailer-worthy. According to Ron Moler, the chief executive of the movie marketing studio Ignition Creative, these top voice actors typically earn between $1,800 and $2,200 per trailer. And it only takes them from 15 minutes to an hour to record one, making this very lucrative work for the few who can get it.

And those few are shrinking in number. “When you look at the demo that typically goes to the cinema, the 18-to-24 male crowd, they’re always going to get a booming, unsubtle voice to say, ‘Go and see “Transformers” immediately, or die!’ ” said Bill Ratner, who has voiced trailers for Judd Apatow and Will Ferrell movies. “These days the classiest fall releases often don’t use an announcer at all.”

Incidentally Mr. Douglas is not the only octogenarian in coming attractions. At 82 Don Morrow has a career in voice-overs that goes back more than 60 years, to when he was a student at Syracuse University, imitating Edward R. Murrow and capturing his voice on an old wire recorder.

“There’s nobody as old as Hal and me,” said Mr. Morrow, who did the trailer for “Titanic” but must audition for new work. “I’m sure that you’ve heard more than one story about guys that retire. They die. And I don’t want to die. So I’ll work till I drop.”

Ms. Tobias, the voice-over consultant, said Mr. Morrow and Mr. Douglas are still hired to do trailers for the same reason that Tony Bennett is still singing. They don’t sound passé because they don’t think their time has passed.

“What is it that makes someone current to the culture when a lot of their peers fall by the wayside?” Ms. Tobias said. “Some older guys want to tell me what’s wrong with what’s going on now and how it was so much better in their day. ‘Wait a second — what do you mean in your day? Am I working with a ghost?’ ” - STEPHEN HEYMAN